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Proposed New Fees from 1 April 2007

General UK immigration & work permits; don't post job search or family related topics!

Please use this section of the board if there is no specific section for your query.

Moderators: Casa, push, JAJ, ca.funke, Amber, zimba, vinny, Obie, EUsmileWEallsmile, batleykhan, meself2, geriatrix, John, ChetanOjha, archigabe, Administrator

yankeegirl
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Post by yankeegirl » Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:00 am

Cheers, JAJ :)

johnts
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e-petition to the prime minister

Post by johnts » Sat Mar 31, 2007 7:45 pm

As you must know, the IND have increased fees for ILR (Permanent Residence) & Naturalisation (Citizenship) phenomenally. This is nothing but a political stunt that hopes to dissuade people from applying for residence and making the immigration statistics look better. The govt will also be seen as doing something to control immigration . The truth is this prohibitively penalises legal and law abiding migrants and does nothing to prevent illegal migrants from misusing the system. We have an option to make our voices heards. Registering your support at the Prime Ministers e-petition site will let us have a response and make them aware of our concerns. The link appears below.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Immigration-Fees/

Every adult resident is eligible to register support, so if your partner has a unique mail Id and would like to support, please make sure they do so as well.

To make our campaign take off we need as much support as we can. So please forward this info to -

1) Any of your friends that will be affected by the new fee structure

2) Any of your friends that have already been through ILR & naturalisation as they will appreciate our concerns

3) Any of your friends that are British Citizens who see through this gimmick and are willing to support us Please make sure you do not spam people unknown to you.

Administrators, could I make a request to post this as a sticky ?

Thanks & regards,

John T S

reverend
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Post by reverend » Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:17 am

ilm wrote:Having read the 'Response to the Consultation' does anyone else feel that it is flawed? The questions seem bias towards business, students and tourists and those engaged in the consultation process seem to represent tourists, students or the business sectors? It would appear just one respondant was represented in the category of sponsor!

Read the answers to the questions and it would appear the consesus was for costs to be competative and attractive. The aim was to produce a self financing immigration system so it is no surprise that settlement, not work or student based applications, have had to be increased by a large amount to subsidise other applications. Although respondants did not agree that citizenship should be priced according to value it clearly has been increased. Interesting to know what value they would have put on a British passport had the response been more favorable?

...

As a point of interest has anyone else wondered at the logic behind the wording of Q2. 'Should prices reflect a range of factors, or only those that are of value to the migrant?' Read the Qualitive summary on page 19 and see if it makes any sense to you?

ilm's points outline the most important factors about the new pricing, and they should be discussed here. The Consultation Response revealed the following main themes:

1. The Consultation and respondents focussed on business and educational institutions only. No mention was made of a right of people to be with their families in the UK, and individuals applying for ILR to be with their spouse/partners were not consulted.

2. Despite this, more than half of respondents thought that pricing should be targeted to cover the cost of processing the application, rather than on the 'value of citizenship' to the immigrant, which is a subjective value impossible to calculate.

3. A majority of respondents felt that pricing should be set to enable Britain to remain competitive as a destination for immigrants. It was also s stated aim in the Consultation document that the government wanted to ensure that pricing was not out of line with its competitor states.

4. Regardless of the findings, the government went on to completely ignore the responses to Consultation, and priced ILR according to their percieved value of UK citizenship, and its "privileges and entitlements that are highly prized".


ilm - Question 2 asked should prices be fixed according to a full range of factors, or only according to the governments perceived value of citizenship to the immigrant. The answer they wanted here was the latter. The answer that they got was the former (79%) (range of factors cited was for the UK to remain competitive, value of having the immigrant working for the UK economy, purpose of stay, length of stay, quality of service in the immigration system, as well as the value of citizenship to the applicant). It didn't matter, as the government went ahead and fixed pricing according to their perceived value of citizenship to the immigrant anyway.

What the government has done here is issue a public consultation, taken the findings, thrown them out of the limousine window on the way to westminster, and structured the new pricing according to their own requirements, and penalised the category of applicant that was not consulted. The lack of acknowledgement of spouse / partners seeking ILR with a UK citizen, and a range of other flaws in the Consultation, were challenged by Lord Avebury in the 29th March debate before the Lords Easter recess. You can read the debate, including Barnoness Scotlands defence of the new pricing here. It makes interesting reading.

I urge you all to write to the main suspects: your local MP, Liam Byrne, Baroness Scotland, Lord Avebury.

I feel terribly betrayed and helpless in light of the new pricing, and my wife simply feels that she is not wanted here, despite the fact that she has already made a considerable contribution to British life and the ecomony. I've prepared a rocket of a letter to fire of to all of the above and the liberal newspapers tomorrow. Let me know if anyone wants a copy. To be honest, I've written them as a form of therapy, as I expect their effect on the recipients to be around about zero.

Marie B
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Post by Marie B » Mon Apr 09, 2007 3:19 pm

Marie B wrote:
My husband is self-employed and runs his own company - are visa fees tax deductable?



Actually, yes.

Any business can write up an agreement to cover the fees necessary to bring in a worker. It is similar to relocation costs, etc.

Look into it. You'll need to study up the details, but the business can write it off as a business expense.
Thanks for the reply! Company accountant is looking into the details. My husband is here as a spouse and not on a WP but accountant seems to think that doesn't matter and ILR fee is a legitimate expense. Fingers crossed. Will let you know what the rules are when we get to the bottom of them.

John
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Post by John » Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:46 pm

Marie B wrote:
My husband is self-employed and runs his own company - are visa fees tax deductable?

Actually, yes.
I have to say that I strongly disagree with that. I see no basis whatsoever for UK tax relief to be sought on any such fees.
John

vin123
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Post by vin123 » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:38 pm

The fee (ILR) could be written off as a legitimate business expense - perfectly legal as it covers the cost for an entity (employee) to remain legal which entitles him to vitally take part in every day business affairs. No problem at all as far as I see it.

John, do not confuse this with HMRC' provision for claiming personal tax relief. I think you are referring that, which obviously is not allowed.
Also, the expenses refunded or claimed for this from company accounts will not come personal benefits (P11/d).
John wrote: I have to say that I strongly disagree with that. I see no basis whatsoever for UK tax relief to be sought on any such fees.

John
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Post by John » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:54 pm

Vin123, this is not the place to conduct a detailed examination of the finer points of taxation law, but there is no doubt in my mind that the visa application fees fail the "wholly and exclusively" test, let alone the "wholly, exclusively and necessarily" test applied to employees as regards their P11D expense claims.

That is, a successful applicant for say ILR not only gets the right to continue to work for their employer, but also the right to live with their family, the ability to apply for Naturalisation (maybe after the passage of a further amount of time) etc etc.. So clearly the payments cannot be "wholly and exclusively" for the benefit of the business.
John

vin123
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Post by vin123 » Wed Apr 11, 2007 9:59 pm

John,

In your earlier post, you were referring this as "tax relief" sought and now you are saying this is coming off P11D.
I know little about accounting expenses or taxation so please correct me if I got it wrong. From my understanding P11D lists only those expenses incurred for the company for an employee that could be deemed as beneficial.

I still don’t understand how ILR fee refund benefits someone based on your wholly, exclusively and necessarily theory.

The only benefit for the employee is - when he resigns and finds another job without a visa requirement!, which then is obviously outside the scope.

I have personally refunded myself the ILR fee from company accounts, which has been accounted and audited by the Revenue.
John wrote:Vin123, this is not the place to conduct a detailed examination of the finer points of taxation law, but there is no doubt in my mind that the visa application fees fail the "wholly and exclusively" test, let alone the "wholly, exclusively and necessarily" test applied to employees as regards their P11D expense claims.

That is, a successful applicant for say ILR not only gets the right to continue to work for their employer, but also the right to live with their family, the ability to apply for Naturalisation (maybe after the passage of a further amount of time) etc etc.. So clearly the payments cannot be "wholly and exclusively" for the benefit of the business.

John
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Post by John » Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:58 am

I know little about accounting expenses or taxation so please correct me if I got it wrong. From my understanding P11D lists only those expenses incurred for the company for an employee that could be deemed as beneficial.
Sorry, yes you have got it wrong. And again this is not the place to discuss very technical taxation points.
John

vin123
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Post by vin123 » Thu Apr 12, 2007 8:19 am

John wrote: Sorry, yes you have got it wrong. And again this is not the place to discuss very technical taxation points.
You are saying that I got it wrong - agreed.

I'm sure I'm not the only immigrant here who floated their own ltd company the very next day after ILR, so it will be useful if you point out where/what I got it wrong so that people discussing and I myself know.

Forget technical aspects, I'm somebody who believes that there is plain & simple explanation to everything without using jargons.

May be you got a valid point that could correct others or there is a chance to stand yourself corrected. So make the most of it !

Thanks

stedman
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Post by stedman » Wed Apr 18, 2007 4:53 am

Re increased fees: the US have done exactly the same...

http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/75154.html

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