Over in the US of America, fast food restaurant Chick-Fil-A has been snubbed by The Muppets, over the former’s openly homophobic stance on gay marriages. A deal for the Jim Henson Company to provide toys for Chick-Fil-A kids’ meals has been scrapped as a result.
Okay, not the most exciting consumer story ever. Helpfully, Taiwan’s bonkers NMA CGI news channel have brought it to life in their own inimitable style…
The new iPhone 5 will be on sale in Autumn and will come with a 19-pin connector port at the bottom instead of the 30-pin port “to make room for the earphone moving to the bottom”, apparently. You might think that’s boring, so let us put it another way:
All those accessories you bought for your iPhone and all those things you connect with your phone, won’t work if you get the latest Apple phone.
Speakers, power chargers, iPods, iPads… they’ll all effectively be obsolete as far as your new phone is concerned. Bad news, unless you’re the owner of a company that will be making adapters to link your old leads with the new socket.
“Apple needs to find a solution not to disappoint their current clients who want to upgrade to the new iPhone but are tied to an expensive accessory that have bought,” said Franciso Jeronimo, a tech analyst. ”I believe Apple will come up with some sort of adaptor so the new iPhone can be used with previous connectors.”
So will Apple do the right thing and ship the iPhone 5 an adaptor, so you don’t have to re-buy all your accessories, or will you have to wait for some other company to bodge some together for you?
Booze comes in all kinds of shapes, sizes and flavours and if you’re into getting off your head, there’s almost certainly something on the market for you. But what if you’re the alcoholic equivalent of a fussy eater, and nothing is quite right for you?
You need Air instead. It’s the upcoming drink that will launch in the US of America soon and is simply a mixture of water and alcohol (with some carbonation) to give it added fizz. Boozy water then. 4% ABV.
The company behind it, Fourloko, are also planning berry and citrus-flavoured versions as well, but that’s a bit too extreme if you ask us. So, would you forego the taste of lager and cider to sup yourself pissed on something that tastes of nothing?
We all know someone who seems a little bit dodgy. We might even know they are taking “morally wrong” cash in hand. Generally, however, our dislike of the taxman outweighs any personal antipathy towards neighbourly tax dodgers. After all, they’re unlikely to be on Goldman Sachs’ level are they?
However, times is hard, and the latest figures from HM Revenue and Customs reveal that they made £374,000 worth of ‘thank you’ payments to members of the public who had been kind enough to grass up their friends, relatives and neighbours.
Investigative website Exaro also revealed this is not a new thing, with over £1m in palm greasing paid out in the last three years. Last year’s figure wasn’t even the highest figure to date and the last five years amounts show a general upward trend- £309,620 in 2010-11, £384,110 in 2009-10, £281,000 in 2008-09, and £155,950 in 2007-08.
John Whiting, the director of tax policy at the Chartered Institute of Taxation, told The Telegraph: “While many people do not realise that they can get money [for informing], the Revenue does have the power to pay.”
So could you do it? Payments range from around £50 up to several thousands, depending on how much tax is recouped as a result of the information provided. HMRC does not promote these bounty payments openly, and you are advised to ensure that any request for payment for informing is made in writing and a record kept. Payments are at HMRC’s discretion and depend on “the value of the information and the quality of the result”, according to an HMRC spokesman, although he confirmed they are not necessarily a fixed percentage of the tax recouped.
And you can inform on just about anyone. Popular informees are former business partners, former spouses and employers, but you can just as easily grass on “someone bragging in the pub” or your really annoying neighbours.
A total of £42 million of unpaid tax was recovered between 2005 and 2009 as a result of information received from members of the public, according to HMRC, who declined to provide more recent figures. Clearly they did not want anyone working out the percentage of bounty fees to tax avoidance.
HMRC “would expect individuals to think first about the wrongdoing rather than about how much they might make” but at Bitterwallet, we are all in favour of killing two birds with one stone. However, before embarking on a bounty career and spending your life in pubs waiting to overhear some snippets of tax avoidance, note that any cash payment for information is only handed out once any tax has been recovered. And that could take years.
Better get started now then.
Fancy a nice little earner? Grass someone up to the taxman. | BitterWallet
Hands up if you want to see some bankers thrown in jail? Well, you’re in luck because it could well be happening thanks to the Serious Fraud Office confirming that they’re ’satisfied’ that existing laws can cover manipulation of interest rates.
The announcement, made by SFO director David Green QC, means that traders could well end up thrown in the clink… for 10 years! Crivens. It’s all getting a bit serious now.
In a statement the SFO said it was ’satisfied that existing criminal offences are capable of covering conduct in relation to the alleged manipulation of Libor and related interest rates’.
Eight financial institutions are being investigated by the Financial Services Authority and the SFO is also looking at a number people. The government want a fast turnaround on it too.
RBS chief, Stephen Hester said his bank were being investigated by the FSA over their role in attempting to manipulate borrowing rates, adding: “RBS is one of the banks tied-up in Libor. We’ll have our day in that particular spotlight as well. Even though when all the Libor (fines) are out most of it is going to be around the wrongdoings of a handful of people at a number of banks. Those wrongdoings taint the whole industry beyond the handful of people and that makes it a huge problem.”
