Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, stressing “the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid”, has proposed to modernize the UK’s income tax system. Once employers provide payroll information in real-time, “it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.”
I’m sure that subjects of the Crown have nothing to fear. The state can be trusted to process their paychecks promptly, correctly, and efficiently. Only a crank would object to this modernization plan. After all, everyone fondly remembers the Star Chamber that evolved out of a similar medieval program for keeping tabs on the Jews. Since it worked out so well last time, how could anyone expect things to go wrong now?