bloke

Arrive at tax office at 5:30 today to hand in tax return (last minute as usual )

Ahead of me long queue. Two chavs before me in queue.

We wait a couple of minutes (by which time queue has moved a yard or so)

Chav1: **** this i'm off to the pub.

Chav2: But yer get fined if yer hand it in late.

Chav1: Yer but it's only a one'er

Chav2: Yeah **** it let's go...

And off they go.

For the sake of waiting 5 mins to hand in their forms (which is all it took), they happily took a £100 fine to go for a beer.

WTF I'm bloody sure I earn more than them but not £100 in 5 mins!

Bubba po

But they can just go and break into someone's shed or something, and sell what they steal.

Petem95

But they'd still be 100quid down compared to if they'd handed in the forms first!

I can understand the feeling tho - I was going to do my return online at the weekend, but couldnt be arsed and tried to forget about it hoping the problem would go away, but it didnt so I filled it in online earlier this evening!

hedgehog

In truth they may not need to pay the fines as the Inland Revenue may have no authority to impose them, in the same way as it is likely that councils have no authority to impose parking fines.

Any Act allowing any authority, other than a court of law, to impose a fine must explicitly repeal the 1689 Bill of Rights. In practise most Acts don't do this and so the only way for the Inland Revenue, or the local council, to fine you is through the courts. They certainly can't send you a little letter demanding money with menaces as they would like you to believe they can do.

If all the people who got parking fines, or Inland Revenue fines, for being a little late pointed this out and asked if the case could proceed to court as only the court had the authority to issue punishment, in the form of a fine, then things would certainly become most entertaining down the local court house.

Tiggs

Genius idea again from Mr The world is out to get us.

People too stupid to send in their tax return MONTHS ago do not need to know about ways to get of the fine...they need to send their return in sooner.

Do you want the IR without ability to get returns sent in? Do you want ppl to park where they like because no one can enforce fines?

T

ajm

So tell us.... did you manage to get your father off that parking fine in the end then?

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthread.php?t=388481

Tiggs

Funnily enough i did!

But that has no bearing on my opinion that the fines should be enforced.

I would like a speed camera on every street and cant wait for them to start fitting GPS to cars.......but i still got off my own NIP.

Unless you feel guided by my example i would suggest you adopt a common sense view...fines need to be enforced.

T

ajm

Unless it is you, it seems.....

Tiggs

I am happy for enforcement all the way. If i get off then so be it, but i am happy with the system.

Jap2Scrap

Can't believe what I read on here sometimes.

Leslie

Funny set of standards I say!

Les

Jye

Tiggs and pslewis, separated at birth.

Sith

Funny, I had thought the same Jye.

carl

They must have been fairly well-paid chavs in order to be required to submit a tax return, surely?

hedgehog

The 1689 Bill of Rights is one of the documents which produced a situation whereby many legal systems across the world came to be based upon the British system. As the name implies it gave the citizens of the UK the right to justice.

To prevent some hood from randomly handing down fines the Bill of Rights placed restrictions upon exactly who could hand down fines and, quite reasonably, limits this to a court of law. So I can't fine you every time you post to SN for example, even if I post saying that I'm going to do it.

Now, the law surrounding all aspects of this is complex, as law always is, but the fundamentals are that only a court can impose a fine upon you. A speeding fixed penalty notice is, in effect, and example of this as it always gives you the choice of going to court. It recognises that it doesn't really have the authority to fine you but that you may want to just pay up to avoid court, hence why paying up on the FPN the cash can go to the partnership as it isn't really a fine, more a bribe to stop you having to be fined in court. Of course the NIP, while it recognises the BoR, undermines other fundamental rights, namely the right to silence and the right not to incriminate yourself.

It is possible for an Act to repeal the Bill of Rights i.e. to say something like "The bit in the BoR about needing a court to impose a fine doesn't apply to the section below..." However, in truth most (I suspect all) Acts do not explicitly repeal the BoR and some recent case law (I don't have it to hand at present) asserted that an implied repeal of the BoR was not sufficient and that it needed to be specifically and explicitly repealed.

Amusingly I have just discovered that there may be someone who is going to try a "test case" with the Inland Revenue to see if he can establish exactly where they get the authority from to impose the fine being discussed. It may be that the legislation they are using does indeed contain an explicit repeal of the BoR but we will not know until someone finds out.

In the case of parking fines the situation is, clearly, complex but in general if someone clamps your car the BoR would make it very clear that they can not "fine" you to have it released. They could take a civil action in the courts to ask that a fine be imposed but I have no concept of how they might show damages on their part. However, this situation would not be clear cut as there might be issues of private land and the use of terms such as "release fee" rather than "fine" for example. There are currently several test cases being built in this area and so far no council has been willing to fight it in court. There is a possibility that one council may be trying to claim that the "fine" is a "debt" and then take this to a court for payment but I don't have specific details on that case.

This is not so much about "getting off fines" as maintaining our rights as a citizen and with recent developments these rights are being eroded at a considerable rate of knots. It is important that we all consider the implications of not defending the Bill of Rights and other elements that are seen as examples of a civilised society and a developed legal system, the right to silence and the right not to incriminate yourself have already gone with the motoring related "Notice of Intended Prosecution" and s172 which insists that you must sign it or be subject to a greater penalty.