Post by Athel Cornish-BowdenPost by charlesPost by Peter T. DanielsPost by charlesmer?
Post by the OmrudPost by JanetPost by Peter T. DanielsPost by Richard TobinI don't think these are the same. You will find a blueberry in
a pie, and a chicken in a farm, but I would not refer to an
item in an expenses claim as "an expense". "Expenses" has
become a technical term in itself, rather than simply the
plural of "expense".
Even if you are so conscientious as to submit only a single receipt?
Yes.
Post by Peter T. DanielsWould others pad their "expenses account"?
I believe that "expense account" is a fixed phrase, but it's not
one I've ever had occasion to use...
Next to nobody has had an expense account for 40 years. What we
have (had - I'm retired) is the right to reclaim expenses wholly
and necessarily incurred in the fulfilment of our business
activities. The effect is financially neutral to the individual,
although it did allow me to travel to some interesting places. Any
"expenses" which were not necessary are taxed (in the UK anyway) as
income.
Another effect of having VAT. Declaration with paper proof of VAT
having been paid make the VAT reclaimable,
in the UK, VAT can only be reclaimed if the bill been paid by the VAT
registered company. so individual's hotel expenses can't be covered -
unless the company is charged directly. It usen't to be like that, I
don't know when it changed.
Maybe it's/has been different in Britain, but both times I returned from
Germany, along with the customs declaration to prepare for the US agent
there was a form to claim return of VAT, but since I only purchased a
book or two at a museum shop, the amount was too small to bother with
(maybe even below a certain threshold?).
here, VAT is not charges on books - so nothing to refund.
I don't know how much of a fuss the Brexiters made over VAT before the
referendum, but it's something they could legitimately have bitched
about if they understood it. Before the UK joined the EEC there was
purchase tax rather than VAT -- superficially similar to VAT but
different in some very important details. Purchase tax was levied on
wholesale prices, which meant that only a relatively small number of
wholesalers needed to keep proper accounts that could be inspected by
the tax people, instead of the vast army of retailers that now have to
spend a significant amount time keeping their VAT records in order. In
addition, it was relatively easy for the Government to set different
rates of purchase tax for different sorts of product, whereas it's a
lot more complicated with VAT.
Incidentally gramophone records were almost the only item for which the
tax component was there for everyone to see -- everyone who subscribed
to the Gramophone, anyway, so one could see that the typical price of a
classical LP was something like 30/- + 9/6 tax.
That must have been a very, very long time ago. 30/- = $3.60 (before the
floating -- was that something Nixon did?), and in 1968 when I started
buying records, the list price would be about $7.98 for the full-price
labels. Each label had a budget label at about half that, where they
mostly reissued earlier recordings. Angel was the US outlet for EMI, and
they were notorious for their lousy sound quality. (Modern CD reissues of
1960s EMI items show that the fault was in the record-pressing, not the
recordings.) Its budget label was called Seraphim. Columbia had Odyssey.
RCA's may have been Victor. Early on they had Camden, named for their
home town -- most of Caruso's celebrated recordings were made in Camden, NJ. I don't recall that the three that eventually became Polygram --
Decca (London in the US), DG(G), and Philips -- had special labels for
their lower-priced items, but they were priced variously.
