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The PalArse of Westminster

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Exposing the hypocrisy, greed and incompetence of our "respected" elected political "elite".

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Georgie Porgie Is "Shocked"



The government, for reasons best known to itself, has decided to play up to people's prejudices  and encourage media hysteria over the tax affairs of people classified as "rich".

This is rather odd, given that Cameron, Georgie Porgie (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and their associates are not exactly short of a few bob themselves. Anyhoo, wee Georgie has today expressed shock at the fact that some "rich" people organise their tax affairs in a manner so as to reduce their tax burden.

Osborne told The Daily Telegraph:
I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it’s within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don’t think that’s right. 

I’m talking about people right at the top. I’m talking about people with incomes of many millions of pounds a year. The general principle is that people should pay income tax and that includes people with the highest incomes.
I’m not allowed to be shown the names of the individuals but I’ve sat with the most senior people at the Inland Revenue, the people who run some of the high net worth units there. They have given me examples, anonymised examples, and so we are taking action."
Georgie claims that he was shown anonymised tax returns of "rich" individuals who were paying a tax rate of "only" 10% or less on their income.

Well Georgie someone was having a laugh with you, the tax returns were yours!

All "joking" aside, as Chancellor how is that this is only now "news" to Osborne??

Whipping up the media into a fire storm of hysteria over this may serve a short term political goal. However, it will come back to bite the Tories on their arses:

1 Tax avoidance is legal

2 George, his friends and the boards on which they sit use the services of accountants, trust funds, schemes etc etc to reduce their tax bills.

3 comments:

  1. I fail to understand why a Government minister who has responsibilities for matters of taxation can not have full access to information held by HMRC when it would appear that HMRC can obtain all manner of information about persons. This begs the question of who runs the UK is it HMRC or Parliament?

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  2. @08:53

    On a point of confidentiality, HMRC employees are only allowed to view records that are relevant to the task in front of them. To view anyone's record without the right "authority" is deemed surfing/trawling and can lead to sacking. Osbourne may be the Chancellor but he has no rights of access to taxpayer records as he is NOT an HMRC member of staff, who incidentally are not even allowed to look at family members or neighbours. Any case on their desk that involves family, friends, neighbours must but be flagged up and the case given to someone else.

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