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.