I Discovered a Maths Loophole in UK Tax 

Classic case of burying the lead

Shouldn't the monetary department of the govt of UK fix that?

@@MoneyChanger02 lede (and no, i'm not fun at parties)

Happened in Portugal with Pingo Doce. Not that they fake prices but sometimes if you, for example, buy 100g of apples, sometimes they'll charge you as if you bought more, so you need to check if the weight on your check is correct. It was on the news just last week actually

I’m in Australia and the standard practice for price discrepancies like that at major retailers is that you get the first item free, and subsequent items at the shelf price.

Except they don't get to keep that money. Anything listed in a tax field goes straight to the government.

​@@snex000Watch the video before you comment

@@complainer406 Right after you fix RU-vid to work that way.

@@williamcurtis2145 Wouldn't put it past the UK.

@@snex000 It does work that way, you have to scroll past the video to read and write comments

I always check my receipt every time

They're definitely meant to be 16p, there's been a huge error on Sainsburys end somewhere.

Discounts are often taken off at the end of the receipt, it may have been that.

@@1224chrisng as you are someone who always checks, how often are the receipts wrong? asking as someone who has never checked

this same concept applies to people that do not check their timestamps. your employer is NOT above ripping you off!!

Yeah, I cracked up as soon as I recognised the Landesmuseum behind him, lol

No wonder he has no money 💸 , would have worked in Liechtenstein just as good even if it isn't Luxembourg.😂

He said, "I'm here in England", so why should I think that's not right? And to me the buildings look quite "British". But well, cars running on the right side in England? 😂

When he said "here in England" I assumed we were probably not in England, but had no idea where that was :D Thank you for educating me

Because it was obvious. That was the joke. To explain a joke makes it not funny any more.

I've seen posts on Reddit in the past year about UK grocery stores mis-pricing foodstuffs either at the shelf or at the register, so apparently it's an epidemic!

James May said it first years ago with Sainsbury Taste the Difference cheese.

Are we sure there weren't discounts at the bottom of the receipt? So the itemised prices were still the full amount but adjusted at the end.

Soo many unanswered questions! We need an investigation into sansburys!

@@dancrooksycamore In the US a lot of those are "club price" that requires you to have their (usually free) saver membership at the store.

I don't know how does it work in the UK but in my country you can legitemally pay for it 0.16 and they wont be able to charge you more

Probably said 16p per 100g or whatever

@@ThePizzabrothersGaming could be a classical scam like this. But in this case still would be wrong, it doesnt look like a 700g can unless it's filled with cement

@@ThePizzabrothersGaming Label clearly says 16p each if you put the video on 4k resolution.

@@ThePizzabrothersGaming items that come in a fixed quantity never have the main price listed on a "per 100g" basis. If that info is on the sign, it's much smaller than the actual price of the product.

That's just an accountant's default expression. I'm sure they found it interesting.

Don't worry, you do in fact pay taxes. Your parents just do it for you.

You pay taxes everytime you buy something. So unless you never bought anything in your life, you pay taxes.

@@MaxwellTornado As a minor, they're probably a tax deduction for their parents!

There's a chance you'll pay taxes at some point in your life. The relevance is to pay attention when you do. Unless it's a type of tax that's calculated for you, like sales tax, it's important to know what's going on.

Good thing everything in my country has an MRP (Maximum Retail Price) written on every product so no need to check the shelf price until there is a discount.

Seems a habit worth picking up. It'll save more money than the tax shenanigans at the very least

If it's anything like my Sainsburys store, lots of the prices on shelves still haven't been updated with their new inflated prices. Benefit of SmartShop is that you can see what things actually cost where they've "forgotten" to update the ticket. Edit: The spaghetti hoops just seemed plain wrong though.

@@groundcontrolto I dunno about the UK, but here in Canada, if there's a price on the shelf, they're required to honor it regardless of how wrong or out of date it is, and usually the guy running the price check will update it on the spot...

@@MaverickBlue42 Yeah I'm sure they probably would if I went and asked about it. But as it's one item out of tens in my weekly shop I don't think much about it.

Thankfully, you don't have to understand anything if you're just a salaried worker. At most you'll just get a cheque/bill in April if the government charged you too little/too much tax. It's mostly when you're self employed, or have additional sources of income, that it gets complex as there are additional rules and you have to complete a self assessment.

For National Insurance you only need to care about how it works if you're a payroll assistant or maybe an accountant

The Dunning-Kroeger effect in action! You know more, but *think* you know less!

@@charliefranklin8523 Thats technically true but its funny to see someone reference the Dunning-Kroeger effect in this context lol.

@@ad3z10 A little understanding is very helpful, which is why how taxes work should be taught in schools. It affects just about everyone so it's worth knowing. I've been a payroll clerk in the past, and you would be surprised how often I had to explain to worried workers that getting a pay rise or working more hours never leaves you with less money even if it takes you into the next tax band. Far too many people think that it's smart to limit your earnings to just below the first tax boundary, and if they earn a penny more the evil government will take away a third of their earnings.

It appears the rule of thumb should be: Take the price printed on the shelf and multiply it by 7

@@TestTestGo Is it 7 like 7 or something like 7.3342?

Stand Up Maths is going further into its investigative journalism.

Or simply buy your groceries online

I'm surprised that people are only just realising this happens, it's been happening for as many years as I can remember in the UK at least. Morrisons errors are usually in your favour. Tescos rarely ever makes any pricing errors like this. Asda only makes 'errors' that are bad for you. Sainsburys, well just watch the video.

@@B3Band Not everyone can. And at least over here, it's heaps more expensive than going down to the store.

Doesn't matter if you check A shop does not have to sell an item at the price on the shelf. So unfortunately for you if you buy the item at a different price to the one on the shelf you just have to accept it as your not entitled to a refund or the difference. Checking your reciept afterwards makes no difference

Yep! I had to scroll for several minutes to find this comment, and I was about to just post it myself. Seemed pretty obvious to me. 😅

That factoid would have made this video a whole lot shorter...

If you're paid weekly, your annual income is 52x weekly pay most years. Except the occasional year where you get paid 53 times - every 6 years or so. If they used the correct ratio, a weekly payee vs a monthly payee with the exact same actual annual income would pay different amounts for the year. (Either more or less depending if it's a 52 or 53 paychecks year). Using the correct ratio is fairer in the long run but it doesn't feel that satisfactory either if you look at one year in isolation. This got me curious so I checked my payslip. My weekly pay is exactly my nominal annual salary divided by 52. So on average I'm actually paid about 0.34% more than what my contract says. But if you think about the alternative - dividing by 52.17... on most years actual income would be slightly below what the contract says, and HR might get questions and have to explain math to anyone who noticed and complains.

​@Bobson Dugnutt I don't understand this distinction between getting paid weekly or monthly. Surely some people are paid fortnightly, or are paid by the hour and therefore earn different amounts any given week or month. My point is that, if the government believes their conversion is correct, then you can express your total annual salary as either a weekly or monthly average, at your own choice, meaning everyone can enjoy the extra cash. Or is there something peculiar about stating income in the UK that I'm not familiar with (being from Australia myself)?

​​@@neiltinley4858 there is something peculiar about NI, in that the thresholds apply on a weekly or monthly basis. For Income Tax, the thresholds are annual - for example, if your annual tax-free allowance is 12k, then you can earn £1k per month without paying tax, but you could also earn £12k in a single month and not pay any tax, provided you didn't earn anything else for the rest of the tax year. Because of the way that the PAYE system works, it's likely that you'll pay tax during the month that you're paid, but you can then claim the tax back at the end of the year (sometimes earlier) because the allowances apply to the whole year. For NI, it's calculated on a weekly or monthly basis (employer's choice, I believe). So, if you earn above the threshold in one week/month, but nothing the next week, then you can't claim back the NI you paid in the first week/month. The other idiosyncracy about NI is that it's done per employment, rather than per person. So, if you have one main job that pays, for example, £25k per year, then that puts you firmly in the basic rate Income Tax band, and the normal NI contributions band. However, if you then have a second job, then you'll pay basic rate Income Tax on all your earnings (because you've already used up your annual allowance on your first job), but NI starts again from scratch with the weekly/monthly allowances.

I do not understand. Suppose I am paid weekly on Saturday. If there are 52 Saturdays that year, I get paid 52 times that year. But in 2022 there were 53 Saturdays, so I would have been paid 53 times: once on 01 January 2022 for that week's work (most or all of which was probably in 2021), again on 08 January 2022 for the next week's work, ... , and finally on 31 December 2022 for the last week of that year. The only alternative I can think of is that companies in the UK sometimes skip a payday if it crosses calendar years?

No he has just not understood how the week 53 provisions apply every 7 years and sorts this out

​@@chrissmail4105that assumes that you work at the same place for 7 years, but if you work for less you will either pay more (week 53) or less (no week 53) on average

I do _not_ think most people are paid like this. People who get paid weekly will usually be paid on the same day every week. That means that each week you get exactly 7 days pay, there's no extra days to make up for. You'll get 52 paydays most years And then some years you'll get a 53rd payday. Those are your extra days

TheLockpickingLawyer is also very good at not wasting viewer's time. In fact, it is one of his main focus points when it comes to making videos

You won't BELIEVE how much Sainsbury's charges for Spaghetti in a can. #5 will BLOW YOUR MIND!!!

Some people are too insecure about their own ability to retain an audience, or insecure about their ability to earn money, so they need to use "tactics" rather than their own talent to draw and retain viewers.

There are videos I've clicked on, and even entire channels I've subscribed to, simply from the question being posed in the title of some video that showed up in my feed being answered plainly and concisely right in the thumbnail.

veritasium have a good video explaining clickbait ("Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective") if anyone is curious

A spaghetti hoop, to be precise.

Currys does the exact same practice

I think at least in the US, it’s illegal to not sell it for the displayed price (excluding sales tax of course).

The Spaghetti hoops are indeed a price match price (15:24). But the chocolate bunny was labeled as 50p with a regular price (13:30). And the worst thing is that there doesn't even seem to be enough space on the Spaghetti hoops label for the non-price matched price. (I get why, if you are regularly 5 times as expensive as the stores you compare yourself to, you really wouldn't want to tell people about that.) In the US you even get the product for the advertised price if they have some sort of "$6 for 2" scheme going on. (Or in other words, you still pay $3 even if you buy only one item.) Whereas in Germany, that scheme would mean that you pay the regular 3.39€ or whatever it is for a single item, but they reduce it to 3.00€ per item _if_ you buy two.

I suppose digital price labels on the shelves that can be updated instantly are the solution. Here in the USA, Walmart commonly shows the price per ounce, but also commonly it is wrong. Sometimes they will mix it up and show the price per pound, or the price per item. >:(

That is a good rule! If Walmart would apply that rule they are probably bankrupt within a month ;-)

This same rule exists in the two major Australian grocery stores too

If the item costs more than $10, you get $10 off

Indeed, they have to sell it at shelf price minus 10$ (whatever is the scanned price), or for free if shelf price is under 10$. If you have several identical items, you only get the 10$ rebate on the first item, and others at shelf price. That's in a all kind of store afaik.

It used to be in Michigan that if the stamped price was different than the scanned price, you could get 10 times difference, up to $5. But then the requirement to stamp items was eliminated, to reduce the time to stock shelves.

I bet all the errors where you would pay less then supposed get fixed ASAP too.

We stan

I think trading standards need to get involved.

It takes time to change the tickets whereas the prices on the computer are updated immediately. It's likely that they later changed the ticket to the higher price.

@@harrison805 Why are they changing prices on the fly, though, and not before opening or after closing? Barring some kind of emergency, I can't imagine there's any actual need to change prices more than once a day.

@@harrison805 Where I'm from the lowest advertised price is the one that has to be charged, and the store is responsible for ensuring price tags are in date. I would hope it's the same in the UK.

@@-tera-3345 Yes, it should have been done out of opening hours

Sometimes, sure. But when it happens on 3 items in a bag of 7 items is evidence of scammy behaviour, not just "accidents"

@@lbeg323 When I worked for One Stop, which is owned by Tesco, we would get a batch of labels delivered by post to update price labels across the store. They would be for all kinds of items from every part of the store, just given to us to put out. The prices would already be updated on the tills, and it would just be someone's job to do that on top of the other stuff they're meant to be doing. If that person is stuck doing other stuff before they can get that done, it's going to affect prices across the store, not just in one section. It's still really bad to have these kinds of discrepancies, but it's not like staff are intentionally trying to scam people (you probably do get some staff like that, but it's going to be a real minority)

@@goodguykonrad3701 When I worked for a grocery store chain years ago, each store had one person whose primary job was to make sure all the price labels and signs were correct throughout the entire store. Only when they were done with that could they be asked to perform other duties.

Another comment thread pointed out the 16p was label as 'price match' meaning you have to literally go out of your way and somehow show or say that you know somewhere else sells that same thing for 16p, so you should to, otherwise they charge you their full price.

@@kindlin I really didn't think that's how that worked. The One Stop I worked at didn't have price matched labels, but I regularly shop at a Tesco's claiming Aldi price matches a lot of the time. I don't think I've ever noticed being charged more than was stated on the label. Looking at Sainsbury's website, they don't say you have to prove it at checkout. I don't have a Sainsbury's near me to check, but I'd be very surprised if that's how it works. All the major supermarket chains are competing with each other for customer loyalty, to keep them shopping at that chain instead of others. That's why they push loyalty/membership cards so much: exclusive limited time offers and offering perks to customers spending more at their stores is how they maintain a competitive edge. Attempting to trick customers like that is going to destroy brand loyalty as many would notice significant price differences like that. I haven't been able to find which thread you mention, but I wouldn't be surprised if the person making that claim thinks it works like that because they complained to staff about the incorrect price, and the staff then corrected it for them. Just a guess though

Quite agree 😂 I love a standard leap year

I want the series on fighting Sainsbury's

For that you don't want to subscribe to a mathematician. Subscribe to a Lawyer, they are the ones with jucy storys on tax avoidance (maybe evasion but can you prove it?)

@@TestTestGo Or Jimmy Carr 😆

Are you saying they don't have Migros in England??

@@Eli-su6ql in England, that Migros truck should avoid oncoming traffic!

Until you try to use your two minutes 36.52173913043478... seconds of leave

@@wasspj Policy didn't allow it to be consumed in less than 1 hour increments.

I think NI is a hybrid tax, some goes into the general pot but most goes to the National Insurance Fund which is indeed hypothecated for NI benefits including the state pension.

could we not just slow the rotation of the earth down to 20 hours and speed up or slow down the annual progression around the sun to +50*7 days= 350 days a year ?

@@highpath4776 Sounds expensive.

i made the same point, if you pay day is also the first day of the tax year then it will also be the last and you get a 53rd week every 1 in 7 on average

technically, it shouldn't be 1 extra week in 7 years, it's 5 weeks in 28 years bc. leap years

@@1224chrisng True, but I didn't feel like breaking out the calculator. Fiscal years of 53 weeks happen almost 18% of the time but figuring out that reduces my typing speed from 80wpm to about 20.

There are 53 weeks in none of the years. There may be an extra pay check sometimes because a 53rd week begins in one year and continues into the next, but there are never 53 weeks in a year.

@@1224chrisng but 2000 was a further anomoloy as it was one of the century ones where the leap year didnt happen ?

Of course, the law of large numbers applies. Say of 1000 people, 900 let it slide. That's 315 pounds of profit.

I think they are supposed to sell it to you for the shelf price when that happens.

The staff is paid, no matter if they fix the pricing or work stocking the shelves or something. Just be nice about it and don't pressure the person. Keep it professional and you don't have to worry about it.

That's how they get you. It's discounted enough to get you to buy it but not enough to complain once you realize it's not actually discounted. Just a scheme to get you to buy more than you really wanted to.

@@jekanyika Not at all. You can of course complain but they are not obliged to sell it to you at the lower price.

I'm paid bi-weekly, just checked my payslip and yep it's annual divided by 26. I got paid today, if my math is right I'll have a 27 paycheck year in.. 2032.

Not only hits, but around 2.5% in interest, you got more. This is way more imported actually.

This (the first part) is my main question. The tax brackets are (I assume; it is the case in the US) updated for every tax year, so the weekly-monthly conversion rate should be the correct one *for the current year*. No sense including leap years into your math when the tax bracket only applies to the current non-leap year.

Nice pfp

Parker benefits

@Elliot Mattley yo nice ace pfp

Friends with tax benefits...

..ok in which paragraph can I deduct how much? I watched every video of him

Thought that was what I'd heard, but didn't bother going back to check.

It was a mistake, not on purpose. At that point in the video you can see a textbubble with a link to corrections appear in the top right corner.

I think he meant a Parker Leap Year

Sometimes I think he makes errors deliberately to make math more "relatable".

at one point they were out of step, and scotland now does things slightly differently. I am sure there is lots of accountant etc lobbying for these kind of changes, as for incomes and income tax there are offsets of expenses that can be applied, which can be more difficult to apply to earnings subject to NI

The joke there is, that the "here in England" bit was filmed outside the train station in Zurich, Switzerland.

Well, you see, it all depends on which planet the day is measuring.

Well, the Beatles could.

How are you everywhere

​@@asheep7797 oh God it begins

That would be gaslighting. As shown, there are about 7.02 days in a week ( 365.25/52 )

the fraction 4.3482 weeks/month or 52.1786 weeks/year already is an average that takes in consideration what you are describing. The fraction tells you that every 28 years, there is going to be 5 years of 53 weeks and 23 years of 52 weeks.

This year they just instructed everyone earning over $100,000 to use a formula instead of printing out tax tables that high so the errors only happen to people or couples filing jointly who earn under $100,000

@@p5ychop3nguin Tax tables have never gone beyond 105, that's standard.

You can make sure you get that extra payment every year by always starting a new weekly paid job 6 days before the end of the previous tax year.

It’s voluntary so Only at participating retailers but that is most of the big ones.

We have a different policy in the UK. What happens is you press the help button, then the checkout supervisor comes and looks at what you're buying, assumes it was a weight issue and clears the message and walks away without saying anything, then you need to call after them and explain the issue, then they roll their eyes at you, cancel the item and scan it again for you and read you the price that came up, then you need to tell them it was something else on the shelf, then they read you that the price coming up on the scan again, then you say "I'll go and check the price" and you go and check then come back, then you have to find where they've gone and tell them you were right, then they call on the walkie-talkie for someone to go and have a look at the shelf, then...

@@charliedobbie8916 and finally, the shelve price is an innovation to offer to make transaction "anyway", meaning they do not even have to give the item at the advertised price.

In Norway, the standard practice is that you get to buy the thing at the sticker price (within reason; no one is selling a kilogramme of cheese for 1 p). It's not strictly required by law, but exceptions from this are very uncommon, particularly in food stores.

@@charliedobbie8916 in Germany we have electric price sign synced with the register so everything is pretty much labeled correctly in supermarkets

Assuming they're using a 32-bit architecture, you just need to earn over £4,772,210,000.00 to roll-over to paying nothing! Simple!

@@jeffsergeant so _that’s_ why billionaires don’t get taxed properly! It all makes sense now.

Just had an ad for that bank.

I can't imagine what tarragon grapefruit a la Spaghetti-o's is meant to taste like

and they already have the candle to make it a romantic dinner