How Have We Ended Up Paying For Everything While Doing All the Work Ourselves?
One of the subtlest and most insidious changes in the last few decades has been the steady transference of costs onto the employed and self-employed, and not just in ever-rising tax levels. Even just existing means increasingly paying for the infrastructure and hardware out of one’s pocket to access services, or even actually doing the work of those services ourselves.
The most recent and most basic has been the ‘doctor in your pocket’ scheme of the Government’s that essentially means that if you want to access the NHS then you must supply a smartphone, which as we all know involves a piece of kit that is all too easily lost (or stolen) and needs replacing every three years or so, and paying for a phone service. To say nothing of handily serving as a device that can track your every movement, though that can be useful when it gets stolen and you can haplessly follow its journey to China.
How many people are aware of the imminence of making tax digital? It applies to self-employed sole traders or those receiving income from property.
Here’s what the Government’s own page says:
When you need to start using Making Tax Digital for Income Tax depends on your qualifying income within a tax year. If your qualifying income is over:
£50,000 for the 2024 to 2025 tax year, you will need to use it from April 6th 2026
£30,000 for the 2025 to 2026 tax year, you will need to use it from April 6th 2027
£20,000 for the 2026 to 2027 tax year, the Government has set out plans to introduce legislation to lower the qualifying income threshold (so this tier isn’t yet in law but should be before too long)
Note the key term qualifying income. You might think that means the actual income received after the deduction of expenses. Not so. The term is a euphemism for gross turnover.
Here’s what the Government’s qualifying income page says:
HMRC will assess your gross income (also called your turnover) before you deduct expenses.
For example, your gross income (income before you deduct expenses) could be:
- £25,000 from rental income
- £27,000 from self-employment income
In this example, your total qualifying income would be £52,000.
It’s self-evident that a sole trader running a business with a high turnover, but a small income thanks to high expenses such as cost of materials and staff, will thus be drawn into the net. Bear in mind that this figure is merely one to be used by HMRC to oblige you to join Making Tax Digital. It isn’t what you’ll be personally taxed on; that’s your net income after allowable expenses.
And what is Making Tax Digital anyway? Here’s what it entails:
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is a new way for sole traders and landlords to report their income and expenses to HMRC.
From April 6th 2026, some sole traders and landlords must use it, based on their total annual income from self-employment and property.
You, or your agent if you have one, will need to use software that works with Making Tax Digital for Income Tax to:
- create, store and correct digital records of your self-employment and property income and expenses
- send your quarterly updates to HMRC
- submit your tax return by January 31st the following year
Note the key phrase need to use software. Yes, that’s software you will have to spend time researching, choosing, installing and of course paying for (unless you are lucky enough to have such a simple business that you can land on a free tier service though whether those will last is anyone’s guess). If you use an agent, of course, the agent will have to tool up with all this and charge you accordingly.
This is unlike the existing tax return system, which allows the taxpayer to complete the return online through the HMRC website without having to install special software.
In practice it will mean reporting and paying tax four times a year, with four opportunities for HMRC to charge automatic penalties, especially as there will be four opportunities to make mistakes. Why does one get the funny feeling that if the software goes wrong or is corrupted and someone’s reporting or payments get messed up, it’ll be all the taxpayer’s responsibility?
This whole principle is now so insidious that it has pervaded every aspect of our lives. Appliances come with QR codes to download the PDF manuals that are no longer supplied in paper form. Almost any service you care to try and access now involves going online, from checking in for a flight to communicating with a school office.
Banks close branches and then pretend they’re still there for their customers. Account holders have to provide a laptop and a mobile phone to access their money. One friend of mine was told she could not move an ISA by branch staff, even though she had personally gone to the branch (a rare find in itself). The staff (what a miracle there were any there at all) ended up having to walk her through doing it on her phone in the branch.
Even the dentist operates like this. Before my twice-annual check-up I get sent an email and a request that I fill out all their forms at home in advance. And you need a mobile phone for the login OTP. My time, my phone, my computer. What turned up last week? Yet another letter notifying me of the monthly direct debit being increased.
Whatever you think about Working From Home (WFH), it’s essentially turned even more private houses into 24-hour office premises equipped with high-speed internet, laptops, printers and whole rooms or even garden buildings converted into extensions of the office but mostly and sometimes all at the employee’s expense.
Even though some employers are turning away from WFH, it still suits them that their staff are now all tooled up to work at weekends and other times. And, perish the thought, the next time a ‘pandemic’ erupts and the government decides how brilliant it would be to lock us all up at home again.
I’m a freelance author, though now I’m also a state pensioner. I have been freelance for over 35 years, though during that time I’ve also spent extended periods as an employee, so I’ve seen it from both sides. As a freelance writer I’ve seen the relative value of receipts from books generally decline, but the load and the costs transferred to me from publishers have steadily increased over the years.
It’s impossible to live off erratic and variable book earnings unless one is very lucky, so in practice it means I subsidise the publisher. It doesn’t work the other way round. Publishers and printers depend for their incomes and existences on the products created by authors, even if they add value by turning them into finished and saleable items. Unlike them, I have never ‘lived off’ books because I couldn’t afford to. They’re a useful extra, but that’s all. Therefore, they need people like me more than I need people like them. If I stopped writing it wouldn’t make much difference to me, but a lot more to them.
And don’t get me started on agents. Of all the world’s non-jobs they take the biscuit at 15-20% plus VAT. I’ve tried a couple. One rejected the title of a book I was planning. I sent him alternative after alternative. He dismissed them all until one day he announced he had the solution and proudly sent it to me. It was the title I’d suggested in the first place. I sent him packing.
Along the way, for nine years I was a fulltime schoolteacher (2007-16). It was, believe it or not, a very rewarding experience. But I spent a small fortune not only on everyday resources, but also on supplying a computer that worked properly (unlike school ones), my own internet connection (the school one was always going down), hard drives, printers, paper, cameras, you name it. The increasingly wretched financial state of schools meant the inhouse provision was useless. Stumping up myself saved me from going mad.
None of that was tax deductible, yet the school and parents expected a 24/7 response to emails and a 24/7 educational service. I spent countless school holidays scanning in material and creating resources – all at my own expense as is commonplace for teachers. Some, in the more deprived areas, end up personally subsidising the children’s food and other resources.
Perhaps one of the most insidious developments has been the campaign to shove ever more young people into universities and colleges from where all too many of them emerge into the working world. There they discover there are simply not enough jobs to fulfil the expectations that they’ve been fed. For this privilege they are led into tens of thousands of pounds in debt, which many will never pay off, a millstone that will haunt them indefinitely. Indeed, an increasing number discover that despite the repayments, after a few years they owe more than they started with. And most have absolutely no idea of the true implications of what they are letting themselves in for.
This has normalised the crippling effects of debt – debt created simply to keep large numbers of university staff in jobs. Yet even when I went to university more than 45 years ago it was already apparent that plenty of the lecturers and professors did very little in the way of teaching. During Covid they did next to nothing at all, and having discovered what they could get away with it hasn’t improved much since. It’s an extraordinary system that exists only because of debt.
As it happens, in the early 1980s I discovered just how useless university academics can sometimes be. I already had a degree from the 1970s, but while working fulltime I signed up to take a BA in History at the University of London as an external student. The tuition was my responsibility. All I had to do was pay a registration fee to sit the exams. I duly rolled up in the summers of 1984 and 1985 to sit the papers, having taught myself. I got a 2.1 Honours, better than 95% of the other students, internal or external. And that was back in the days when almost nobody got a first and a 2.1 was a ticket to ride. I hadn’t attended a single lecture or tutorial. I set myself the essays and wrote them one by one.
Yes, I had to do it all myself but at least I hadn’t paid anyone.
There is, it seems, no limit to the extent that costs can be transferred to the individual in almost every context, while simultaneously jacking up prices and taxes. It’s become the new state and business growth model. You increase ‘productivity’ and profitability by moving steadily towards a vision where the organisation does nothing at all except charge for the services which are often performed by the customer. This is far easier than attempting to improve the business. A friend just told me about the house purchase experience, where she had to fill out all the forms for the lawyers she was paying through the nose for.
What about insurance? I pay it, whether for the house, the car, or travelling. Do I have any confidence at all that any of it would ever pay out? No, of course not. I was stuck in Rome during the ash cloud crisis in 2011. Did the travel insurance pay out? Obviously not. Why would it? I just bore the cost of an overnight train to Paris from Rome and then the Eurostar into London. In 2020 I was in Australia when the lockdowns were impending. We had about four days to play with. Singapore Airlines had disappeared like a rat up a drainpipe. Thai Airways saved us (for £900). Would the travel insurance pay out? You guess.
To this we can add another phenomenon: shrinkflation. Do you remember how big a Mars bar used to be? Obviously, some here-today gone-tomorrow boardroom reptile came up with the idea of reducing the size but not the price. Now they’re not worth buying. The same has happened to baked beans. It’s the most absurd policy imaginable for increasing profits since the only outcome eventually could be selling empty packaging.
I’ve drifted a bit from where I started. But the whole thing reminds me of Chico Marx ripping off Groucho in A Day At The Races. He sells Groucho a whole series of useless handbooks, though at least Groucho got the books rather than a fistful of QR codes to download them in PDF form. You can watch it here.
Life has always been a bit of a swiz but these days doing people up like kippers seems to be one of the few growth industries left.
Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer. His latest book, The Confessions of Samuel Pepys. His Private Revelations (Abacus) is published August 7th 2025.
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Also petrol stations and supermarkets. Self-service is a gift to them.
It is – and many people lap it up and comply. Personally I’ll always use a counter with a real person, even if it’s less convenient. I truly hate those self service machines, and prefer to pay for someone who does that job professionally
If I wanted to serve myself, I could just have ordered whatever stuff I was seeking to buy on the internet instead.
Another thing that annoys me intensely is that you no longer go online, find what you want and buy it I.
Now you have to create a profile, with 10 chr password with upper and lower case letters, numbers and a special character supply email address and phone, home address shoe size and God knows what, as often as not for a one-off transaction.
and if the purchase goes wrong or the product defective try finding a person to talk too.
I have no problem with the self service if eg I only have two items and all the tills are busy with several full trolleys, but many Supermarkets now will abuse this and expect more of the work to be done by the customers.
I really resent supermarket self check-outs for the simple reason they expect me to do the work, but then don’t trust me and feel the need to waste my time checking my trolley.
It’s being “age checked” by kids who are barely adults themselves that really winds me up.
Nowadays you have to scan your receipt just to exit the self service checkout area’s barrier because they deem everyone a thief. Did it once. Never again.
Oh? And if petrol stations had manned forecourts with staff pumping fuel and collecting payment – as used to be the case – just how much do you think (do you think?) the cost of motor fuels would be to cover the labour cost? Or if course they would only employ one or two and you could sit in a queue for ages. Or do you imagine employers pay labour costs and not you as part of the sale price?
Similarly, self-check outs reduce labour costs in supermarkets which operate on razor thin margins. You want to pay more for food? Let’s get rid of self-serve check-outs.
I blame the schools.
Very true.
Another aspect of this is the increasing raw greed with which companies try to squeeze every penny out of you.
For example, I remember the times when charging the car on your insurance was simply a phone call: a friendly chap would pick up the phone and tell you “yeah, your new car is in the same in’s group, I’ll change the details, have a nice day”.
Now you need to do it online but still there is an admin fee for taking out a new policy and canceling the old one.
And car tax not being transferable.
And car parking charges being ridiculous.
And so on, and so forth.
Sure but the raw greed of the politicians much exceeds anything in the private sector.
And you of course are not greedy for wanting everything for nothing?
With car tax, why in the 21st century are we still bound by a calendar month for car tax other than the obvious being screwed by the government again. Surrender your car tax – only full months refunded. Buying car tax at some point during a month – pay from the 1st for days that have gone by already.
Guy – great article thank you.
I disagree. Savings are passed on to the consumer, or contribute to higher wages for staff, or excess profits for shareholders. But in a properly free market, excess profits would be quite unlikely. If enough people really wanted shops like they used to be then such shops would still exist. Most seem not to care.
I agree to a point but with the help of elites many businesses are oligopolies or monopolies so the expected competitive restraints don’t work.
Indeed
I very much wish I could see that change in my lifetime
Monopolies can only be sustained if the market is not free, that is Governments intervene with protective regulation, legislation, subsidies and tax credits for some but not others.
This excludes would-be new market entrants, prevents smaller businesses expanding or developing competing products because the regulations do not allow.
Import tariffs and non-tariffs also help sustain monopolistic situations by keeping foreign competition out, not to protect consumers but to protect favoured companies or market sectors. This is why the EEC/EU was created to protect certain sectors of the market economy, resulting in higher prices to consumers. But the same fools who think EU membership is soooo wonderful, are the same ones who complain about high prices, being “ripped off”, monopolies and greedy companies.
”Many” businesses are not oligopolies or monopolies, 99.8% of businesses – that’s “many” I think – are small, medium enterprises. 5.49 million SMEs out of a total of 5.5 million private sector businesses.
People only see big companies not the little ones which in aggregate employ most people and account for most economic activity. They get screwed by Governments who protect the big boys who can offer bigger bribes.
Such shops exist plentifully and are meanwhile making inroads into high streets. They’re just not the ‘brand name’ chain stores British people usually frequent. I still fondly remember a “pepper and tomato crisis” of some years ago the BBC had declared. The inevitable outcome was the BBC audience rushing into Sainsbury’s (in Reading) to empty the shelves of tomatoes and peppers. There were still plenty of both in Indian supermarkets about ½ mile distant as these people never go there.
Yes true – maybe one benefit of “diversity”. Where I live it’s mainly white people shopping in supermarkets – it’s a town of nearly 30,000 people with no butcher and no greengrocer. Our north London village had several of each. Where we are there are not enough ethnics and not enough trendy middle class people to make that sustainable, it would seem. We do have lots of gift shops that sell impossibly expensive stuff that I can’t imagine anyone buying.
The free-market cannot exist in the presence of ‘the state’ which instead causes so many distortions it is impossible for such a self-regulation system to function as it rightly should. If town centre property use was not hindered by CGT on sales, planning restrictions, business rates and authorities using taxpayer funds to attempt to sustain the old dying system, residential would likely return to town centres, then some shops, cafes, services would be sustainable for that local community, or whatever the market demanded. But their idea of a 15 minute city is more like a panopticon prison camp I am guessing.
I’ll just go and sort my rubbish into the permitted bins and move them to the edge of my property. The once the contents have been collected I’ll have to move the bins back onto my property. When I was a lad there was only one type of bin and the dustmen came into your garden to get it and then brought them back.
Plus the council expect you take certain types of waste (e.g. plasterboard, paint) to a specific approved site – with limitations on how much may be taken at any one time…
We have to make a booking to go to the dump… Also we’re told on the council website that they can inspect our rubbish and if we put the ‘wrong’ thing in any bin they can take our bin away. The green bin for garden waste is now something to be paid for (each bin to be paid for) but apparently it doesn’t belong to us and can be taken away if we transgress…
And then the morons in councils moan about flytipping increasing.
I must admit that the “Online Triage” run by Accurrx has been a revelation: you fill in the details and get either a return message and if necessary a doctor phone within a couple of hours. I once even got a face-to-face appointment that day.
Paying for technology is well worth it when you can have video conversations with family and friends all round the world, or log on to seminars on any continent.
My family home didn’t even have a landline phone until I was 16 so I very much appreciate the benefits of the technology we now have.
Can I add self checkout in shops to the scam. Prices are no cheaper but staff levels are reduced and we then perform the work of the once employee for free, whilst also no doubt paying for the welfare payments for the redundant check out person.
“… prices are no cheaper but staff levels are reduced…”
Hester.. just whom do you think pays staff costs? YOU!
You, because all costs are included in the selling price. You pay for staff, the employer just hands over the money he/she has collected from you.
So Hester do you think that fewer staff means reduced labour costs which means you will pay less? Of course prices won’t go down – you have Government and it’s inflation to think for that – but they won’t go up to sustain higher staff levels.
Retail is one of the most labour intensive sectors with biggest payroll expense, and with respect to supermarkets they have very tight margins.
Good rant Guy.
Walkers Crisps. 4 in a packet with lots of air.
Walkers Crumbs you mean. Finding a whole crisp is cause for celebration.
Gin is another one Gordon’s is the worst they used to sell in 75cl bottles this went down to 70cl did the price change? You bet. – up! They then changed the ABV from 40% to 37.5%. To be fair they resisted a price increase for about six months!
As for solicitors, my Partner recently bought the house we currently live in. Like you said first she had to upload their app and then proceed to have to learn about the app before proceeding to fill out all the forms and sending them to said solicitor to sign! Effectively she spent over £1,000 for a couple of signatures having done all the work herself. It nearly drove her insane especially as by her own admission she’s not particularly computer savvy.
Because the Government increases Excise Duty on alcohol every so often, so in order to keep the price below certain price-points, they reduce contents and ABV.
If 75cl and 40%, the price would be higher per bottle.
Price-points. eg £4.99 “looks” cheaper than £5.00 because people’s brains register 4 which is 1 less than 5.
In retail therefore, prices are kept at certain price points, or within price ranges, to be more attractive to consumers. Which price points the retailer aims for will influence what they put in the pack and how much the packaging costs.
As for gin, 70cl bottles will be cheaper to buy from the manufacturer and lighter/less bulky thus cheaper to package and ship. Keeping the price per bottle down keeps inventory costs down for the retailer.
What happens if you dont have a SMART phone? When will it become a legal requirement to own a SMART phone (rhetorical)?
The more we spend on public services the worse they get, and under this deviant mutant government, they may well keel over.
Devient Mutant Government. Sounds like a horror movie… Oh! Wait
The mystery for me is why we have to keep importing workers when there seems to be less and less people working. What do all these imported workers do because it isn’t jobs like I did serving customers
Partly – cheap labour. If there is a ready supply of cheap labour, this pulls down wage costs across the whole wage range.
The Government employs 6.15 million people, one third of that in the NHS.
The Government since Labour’s nationalise everything spree post-1945 has trued to keep the payroll expense down by importing cheap labour.
However a lot of those imports don’t work at all.
Easy to explain: because our taxes don’t fund public services, they fund the debt. The debt is needed for the payroll expense of the welfare state and steady transfer of public services from the private sector or local government to the State since the start of the 20th Century, over-regulation of the economy and society requiring increasing numbers of government employees who produce nothing, just consume, and who are not available to work in the productive economy. (Half the NHS budget is wages.) State run enterprise has no access to private capital which is what funds normal free market enterprise. Instead capital can only come from the taxpayer via direct taxes or indirect taxation – borrowing and money printing. Since the proportion of non-wealth producers (welfare recipients, Government workers and others) has increased compared to the proportion of wealth producers, since those services like health which do have a valuable output, but the cost exceeds that value, the money available to keep the whole Government apparatus afloat isn’t there. In June 2025 Government borrowed £21.7 billion (£6.6 billion more than June last) of which it then paid – are you sitting comfortably? – £16.4 billion (£8.4 billion more than June… Read more »