Give us your suggestion - big or small - of where public money could be saved

"Tax evasion is wrong but the majority of tax evasion isn't done by wealthy people, its done by those on lower incomes by doing things like "cash in hand" jobs."

Are you sure about that? Based on what figures?

Turn off the bloody streetlights/flood lights on buildings.

If you means test a tax then it costs money to adminster. Better to increaes the personal allowance. Its cheaper and as a % gives those at the lower end of the scale a greater % of their wealth that they can keep before being taxed.

If you are over 65 and are paying income tax I would scrap
winter fuel allowance
Free bus passes
Free TV Licence
Free swimming

These all cost money to administer. So they tax Mrs OAP £200 take a bit off in admin and then give them £190 back in winter fuel allowance. Please explain how this efficent?

• raise taxes on alcohol

• I'd keep winter fuel allowance and bus passes but means test them

• and (a radical one)- switch university courses to two years with four ten-week terms in each (no need to have 30 week + holiday while doing a degree unless on some sort of study-related placement)

But you need a mechanism to define OK tax avoidance and Not OK tax avoidance. And just saying "that which is practiced by people that are richer than me" doesn't work in the real world. I'm fully in support of looking at the loopholes on a case by case basis and closin those that fall into the grey area, but just wading in saying tax avoidance is bad is far too simplistic.

Phillip Green is an interesting example. How would you legislate against him, or more correctly his wife? Phillip Green pays his taxes on the money he earns in the UK. His company pays all applicable taxes. The dividend that was paid out was paid out which everyone is so indignant about was paid to his wife, as a shareholder. His wife is not a UK citizen (South African I believe) and does not live in the UK. So, how do you tax that? Its all very well to say that it's a tax avoidance, but how to stop it?

Raise the age at which Winter Fuel Allowance can be claimed to retirement age.

Scrap free bus passes.

What MumsinBeds said, legalise drugs and tax them as high as tobacco.

I also agree with BikeRunSki wrt all public sectors.

I wondered whether they would scrap free nursery places for 3 year olds.

Financially - if you are not at work then you would either pay for them to go to pre-school or would keep them at home with you. If you were at work using a childminder there would be no difference to you as you currently have to pay the childminder for the time a child is at pre-school anyway. If you were at work using a nursery then you would be worse off but no worse off than you were when your child was two.

I do not recommend this action BTW, I just wondered if they would do it.

However, DH, who Knows About These Things says that the scheme is due to be extended rather than scrapped or reduced.

I don't see how you can make tax avoidance illegal as it is legal by definition. You can legislate to make particular behaviour illegal in which case it stops being avoidance and becomes evasion.

Reduce the number of people employed by the public sector. Everything else is just pissing about at the margins.

Because someone has to pay for roads, bin collections, hospitals and schools. If a multimillionaire avoids his or her taxes, people who have less money have to make up the difference.

Vodafone, Tesco and Philip Green cost the rest of us billions. Which would come in quite handy right now when we are facing £85bn worth of cuts to public services. I'm sure people who need cataract operations would rather everyone paid their fair share so they don't have to wait 18months or more for surgery.

Cash in hand is equally wrong, of course, although for individuals it's on a much smaller scale. Two wrongs, however, don't make a right, as everyone knows.

Scrap working tax credits and raise the tax allowance to about £15,000/20,000.

I still quite like this

I don't get why people have a problem with tax avoidance, people are reducing their tax bill through perfectly legal means. As things like ISAs demonstrate its not just an activity of the rich, a lot of people do it.
Tax evasion is wrong but the majority of tax evasion isn't done by wealthy people, its done by those on lower incomes by doing things like "cash in hand" jobs.

Oh please, ISAs are actively promoted by government. It's really nothing to do with the kind of avoidance practised by Green, or Ashcroft, or Vodafone or those City firms - bailed out by us - who used taxpayers' money to invite the big four accountancy firms in to tell their employees how to avoid millions of pounds in taxation.

Citing ISAs is just a silly argument. Doesn't even begin to go anywhere near justifying the kind of tax avoidance practised by the very richl.

This'll be controversial but hey.

Legalise cannabis. This will save money on policing, courts and prison. It will generate income through tax paid, which also stop that money going into the pockets of criminals. Those criminals who only deal in cannabis (and they do exist, really they do) could then deal legally and pay tax. (Obviously not all of them will but generally those people will be very small fry and doing it in a small way on the side as it were.)

"Lets make action against tax avoidence retrospective after the legislation to close the loopholes has been enabled."

So, if they decide not to do ISAs anymore then everyone with an ISA will be fined retrospectively? What about gift aid, you could hit charities up for LOADS of money by closing that particular loophole.

edam- ISAs/Gift Aid/Pension contributions etc are still forms of tax avoidance which do allow people to pay less tax.

huddspur - lots of people break the speed limit, doesn't make it right. 'Everyone does it' is a crap excuse as any 6yo knows.

And ISAs and gift aid are promoted by government to encourage people to save/donate to charity. There are limits on how much you can put into an ISA, precisely to ensure they don't allow people to evade taxation.

Vodafone/Tesco/Ashcroft are on a completely different scale and you know it.

Gift aid avoids tax.
National savings avoid tax.

Using a tradesman below the VAT threshold avoids tax.

Small women buying kids clothes avoids tax.

Choosing Jaffa Cakes rather than HobNobs avoids tax!

The vast majority of people have an ISA or make pension contributions, both are tax free and are forms of tax avoidance. Add to that other extras such as childcare vouchers, then I think you'll find that most people do engage in some form of tax avoidance.

hudd, many things now illegal were once practised by some parts of the population, slavery, bear baiting etc.

As for it being a majority I doubt that, what is you scource for that statistic.

Stop the Olympics. Let some other nation have the hassle and provide expensive jollies for all the VIPs.

Nearly everyone engages in tax avoidance of some sort so making it illegal would criminalise the majority of the population.

I do understand the drivers and economics behind private sector pensions, I worked in the private sector for 12 years. I am just saying, that public sector "reward" (salary+pension) is not necessarily higher than private sector reward of salary+pension. I made my decision to move to public sector based on several factors, of which the final salary pension provision was one. I also took a 15% pay cut (accounting for slightly shorter hours and more leave). But then "reward" is not just about salary and pension is it?

The organisation I work for has:
Stopped catering for any meetings
Stopped private car travel
Stopped air travel and 1st class rail travel
Stopped training which involves external consultants
No longer uses external meeting rooms that we need to pay for: has set up "room swap" scheme with other local public bodies.
Sold off lots of land and buildings, many offices merged. May be needed in time to come, who knows, we need the cash now?
Regions mereged - fewer managerial staff.
Turned heating down in offices, to legal min.
No recruitment, no temps, no maternity cover
Streamlining of staff members
No drinks machines in offices
Only essential maintenance work carried out on our assets (I don't really want to say what I do, but you would miss us if we didn't do it).
Very much reduced capital expenditure, in some places we won't do what we need to do, and will be missed.
And we hadn't had a pay rise for 2 years prior to the public pay-freeze in April.

I am not complaining about any of the above, merely indicating that the bits of the private sector is costcutting for all it is worth.