#hmrc

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Quinn Saint Nicholas- The Tarot Sequence by KD Edwards

Kade Bronson- Wayward Children Series by Seanan McGuire

Leonie Jackman- Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

Seregil í Korit Solun Meringil Bôkthersa- Luck in the shadows/the nightrunner series by Lynn Fleweling

#Quinn Saint Nicholas #the last sun #tls #the hanged man #thm #the hourglass throne #tht #The Tarot Sequence #KD Edwards #Kade Bronson #Wayward Children #Wayward Children Series #Seanan McGuire #Leonie Jackman #Her Majesty's Royal Coven #hmrc #Juno Dawson #Seregil í Korit Solun Meringil Bôkthersa #Luck in the shadows #seregil i korit #alec of kerry #the nightrunner series #Lynn Fleweling #lgbt books #polls #queer book character tournament 2.0

[aneverydaything]

Day 1876, 12 August 2023

#Bristol #architecture #office #HMRC #green #pattern #England #UK #offices

[transbookoftheday]

The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson

SPOILERS FOR "HER MAJESTY'S ROYAL COVEN"!

In the second installment of Juno Dawson's "irresistible" fantasy trilogy (Lana Harper), a group of childhood friends and witches must choose between what is right and what is easy if they have any hope of keeping their coven--and their world--from tearing apart forever.

Niamh Kelly is dead. Her troubled twin, Ciara, now masquerades as the benevolent witch as Her Majesty's Royal Coven prepares to crown her High Priestess.

Suffering from amnesia, Ciara can't remember what she's done--but if she wants to survive, she must fool Niamh's adopted family and friends; the coven; and the murky Shadow Cabinet--a secret group of mundane civil servants who are already suspicious of witches. While she tries to rebuild her past, she realizes none of her past has forgotten her, including her former lover, renegade warlock Dabney Hale.

On the other end of the continent, Leonie Jackman is in search of Hale, rumored to be seeking a dark object of ultimate power somehow connected to the upper echelons of the British government. If the witches can't figure out Hale's machinations, and fast, all of witchkind will be in grave danger--along with the fate of all (wo)mankind.

Sharp, funny, provocative, and joyous, Juno Dawson's sequel reimagines everything you think you knew about her coven and her witches in a story that spans continents and dives deep into the roots of England and its witchcraft. Ciara, Leonie, Elle, and Theo are fierce, angry, sexy, warm--and absolutely unapologetic as they fight for what they believe in, all in the name of sisterhood.

#the shadow cabinet #hmrc #juno dawson #transfem #trans book of the day #trans books #queer books #bookblr #booklr

[tweetingukpolitics]

#farrukh #political twitter #rishi sunak #nahim zahawi #jeremy hunt #conservative party #uk news #uk politics #uk economy #hmrc #tax avoidance #tax evasion

[eaglesnick]

“Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed.” ~ Mwai Kibaki

Cash for honours? Who knows, but when you have donated £5 million to the Tory Party and are then knighted by Rishi Sunak for  “ business, charity and political service” a few eye brows are bound to be raised.

I am not sure what political service the Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour has performed for Britain other than being a senior treasurer for the Conservative Party and donating £5 million pounds to their coffers in 2023. What we do know is that his time in Egyptian politics was rife with controversy.

In 2005 he was appointed Transport Manager under the Mubarak dictatorship. Mubarak was swept from power in 2011 after the Egyptian people had finally had enough of his dictatorial, undemocratic rule.   During this time:

“Mansour was known to be part of the team of Mubarak’s son, Gamal. The general public quickly came to think of this collection of businessmen as being in government to serve their own corporate empires..." (Middle East Eye: 16/12/22)

In October 2009, after two passenger trains collided causing the death of 50 people, Mansour was sacked from his post as Mubarak’s Transport Minister. Returning to his business empire, he was again embroiled in political scandal when he was accused of:

“…partnering up with his cousin, Ahmed al-Maghrabi, who had served as housing minister under Mubarak, to buy thousands of square kilometres of land to construct a residential compound for a fraction of its market price.” ((Middle East Eye: 16/12/22)

Another political controversy involved  sanction busting. In 2022 it came to light that Mansour’s Caterpillar dealership, Unatrac, was supplying machinery to Russia's oil and gas industry despite the international sanctions impose on Russia following Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

As for receiving a knighthood for his charity work, it seems he maybe less concerned with charity than in avoiding business taxes. Not only was Mansour’s company Unatrac trading with Russia despite international sanctions, it was also subject to HMRC investigations into tax avoidance.

“The firm co-owned by billionaire Tory treasurer Mohamed Mansour paid £3.2million in additional tax following an HMRC probe into the potential use of tax havens, it has emerged." (Sunday Mirror: 05/02/23)

Correct me if I am wrong, but surely if ALL taxes that are due were paid in full, then there would be less need for charity?

Billionaire Mansour, it would seem, is more interested in business, especially his own, than in politics or public service. The fact that the Tory Party are now prepared to accept money from donors who advocate the shooting of black MP's and from donors associated with dictators and tax avoidance says it all.

#uk politics #rishi sunak #mohamed mansour #tax avoidance #dictators #mubarak #scandal #hmrc #cash for honours #putin #sanction busting

[generalelectionmusings]

#rishi sunak #uk #politics #tory #conservative party #ukpol #fraud #corruption #HMRC

[mxactivist]

Some statistics on Mx in the UK

I recently submitted a Freedom of Information request to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, they handle taxes in the UK) to find out how many people use various titles.

I had two goals:

To find out a minimum number for how many people in the UK are using the title Mx;

To find out how the number of people using Mx compares to the number of people using other titles.

HMRC provided data from the two largest sets of data they had: self-assessed tax returns, and PAYE (pay as you earn) tax. (Note that these two sets of data don’t contain everyone in the UK, and a small proportion of people are probably in both sets. HMRC also told me that the “other” category contains typos.)

Here’s their response:

Tumblr doesn’t let me add alt text but you can see the full table here on Google Sheets.

The blue rows highlight titles that are represented by a greater percentage of people than in the other dataset. So, for example, the title Mr is represented by more people in the self-assessed dataset (60%) than in the PAYE dataset (47%). (This visually helps more when you view the tables side-by-side instead of one and then the other underneath, which is another Tumblr issue.) I did this to see at-a-glance patterns between gender, marital status, and qualifications relating to tax type. Dr, Mr and Mrs are all larger proportions in the self-assessed group compared to PAYE, and I think that may relate not to qualifications or marital status or relative privilege, but to age - as people age they become more likely to have acquired doctorates and spouses, and they also become less likely to pay tax through PAYE.

There were much higher proportions of people claiming the titles Miss, Ms and Mx in the PAYE group.

It seems that there are at least 7,000 people in the UK using the title Mx in a “legal” (tax-related) capacity. In the grand scheme of things this is a very small percentage, but if I imagine a group of 7,000 nonbinary and otherwise genderly interesting people I find it quite heartening! Hello, everyone. :)

(I feel that I should mention at this point that this data is NOT representative of the proportion or number of nonbinary people in the UK.)

I’m sure that as Mx becomes more well-known these numbers will increase. I may request this information from HMRC again at several future dates to see if any rough trends can be identified.

If you’re out there and you’re in the UK and paying tax and your title is Mx and you didn’t know that you can register your title as Mx with HMRC, I hope this serves to inform you that it’s possible.

~

Edit to add responses:

gnotknormal said:

This is cool. I'd be interested if you could find the info from the DVLA as I'm Mx on my driving licence. Mainly because I requested it myself, when it came to my last employed job my employer didn't even ask me. I said I was a man and they put "Mr" by default, so I feel like there would be more representation in things like driving licence. Just a theory though.

I did consider the DVLA, so yes, I’ll put that on my to-do list!

notacirrhosismachineanymore said:

I think the PAYE data is severely skewed by employers. I'm non binary, AFAB, and my tax is done by a HR department I have neversspoken to, who saw my name and assumed Mr. My preferred is no title, and I definitely never put one on any form. I expect there are a lot of genderqueer people in that situation, or something similar. If your employers HR system only allows an M or F, you would have to shout very loudly at people you don't work with, to get that info updated.

Really good points. I definitely think there are more than 7,000 people who use Mx, and I’d very much encourage people to make sure their title is logged correctly with employers and HMRC.

~

Edit again: I have now made FOI requests to the DVLA and the DWP. Click the links to view my requests on What Do They Know.

#successes #Mx #titles #nonbinary #UK #HMRC #FOI

[dkettchen]

#meme #taxes #hmrc #self employment #freelance #guess who has to send a buncha paperwork to hmrc cause they won't let me have an online acc for stupid reasons #and tried to charge me for not doing a tax return the year I literally didn't earn enough to need one smh #but at least we managed to cancel that penalty and unneeded return and I know what to send where now aaahhh #will I finally manage to get my name changed on hmrc literal YEARS after getting it changed LITERALLY EVERYWHERE MF ELSE??

[willcodehtmlforfood]

@sztupy

#hmrc #mistakes were made

[rumade]

In England if you work part time you don't make enough to pay full National Insurance contributions, which can impact your state pension when you're old enough to claim it. When you have spare money, you can choose to top this up.

Well, after being on hold with HMRC for 50 minutes, I finally got my ref number and was told about some of the years not showing up on the online record

They want £4,402.15 from me. £1521.60 of that needs to be paid before the end of July, or it will get larger.

I'm debating whether to bother paying any of it. I will have the smaller amount of money at the end of June, but I could put it in savings instead, or LISA which gives me a 25% bonus but can only be spent on a house or retirement.

I am losing my job and do not have another one lined up yet, so obviously that's a factor too.

#work #money #hmrc

[gayforcarstairsgirls]

Just finished reading Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson and dudeeeee I cannot wait for the sequel to come out so in the meantime I'm satisfying myself by making picrews of Niamh's "gaggle of girls" 😌

#i was unsure about making snow cause hm #but that scene where they get called gaggle of girls was just my favourite and i genuinely hope some stuff can happen in book 2 #imma not say anything else because spoilerssss for everyone who hasn't (BUT SHOULD) read it #if you have read this book and loved it as much as i did then PLEASE come yell with me about it #her majesty's royal coven #hmrc #juno dawson #holly pearson #snow vance morill #snow vance #theo wells #merhaps i will make the original girl group #but i only like three of them sooo

[miaisagirllover]

You've read HMRC?? That's really cool! I've been looking for someone to discuss the series with for the longest time (finished re-reading HMRC #1 last week, currently waiting for The Shadow Cabinet to arrive at my local library).

ahh another hmrc coven fan! ur gonna be really shocked by the end of shadow cabinet trust me

#hmrc #her majesty’s royal coven #asks

[storiesxtold]

Reading Luke's chapter in The Shadow Cabinet and I feel like Willow Rosenberg: "I knew it! I knew it! Well, not knew it in the sense of having the slightest idea, but I knew there was something I didn't know."

#ooc #idk if he has more chapter than this one #but its the working mens club chapter #and boy oh boy do the surprises keep coming #the shadow cabinet #hmrc

[transbookoftheday]

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

A Discovery of Witches meets The Craft in this the first installment of this epic fantasy trilogy about a group of childhood friends who are also witches.

If you look hard enough at old photographs, we’re there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple.

At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls–Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle–took the oath to join Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she’s a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.

#her majesty’s royal coven #hmrc #juno dawson #transfem #trans book of the day #trans books #queer books #bookblr #booklr #reposting this because of the sequel

[tweetingukpolitics]

#jo maugham #political twitter #conservative party #bbc #hmrc #the met #met #charity commission #uk law #environment agency

[drowster]

Conner Molander from Half Moon Run doing his thing.

#drowsterqcculture #half moon run #concert photography #conner molander #hmrc #show