As you listen to, or perhaps, try to stop your ears from, the caterwauling chorus of shrieks and moans emanating from the Labour party - including, bless their old-fashioned cotton socks "Stop the Cuts" - soooo 1980s! - as they seek to disguise the uncomfortable fact that the difference in the cuts they would have applied had they won the election and those announced by the Coalition is microscopically tiny. Similarly, their non-stop attack on tax avoiders comes hand-in-bloody-hand with their accusation that ideology is driving the 'Tory cuts' - if only, but more of that anon!
I am obliged to The Coffee House for two insights. First, Patrick Nolan describes a forum he attended as a speaker and in the following discussion he . . .
took the chance to ask an audience member whether she had seen the HMRC statistics on the tax gap (tax avoidance). She said yes. I then asked her to clarify which taxes were most prone to avoidance and who are the people who are most cheating the system. She couldn’t. I had the statistics with me and pointed out that the largest gap in the tax base relates to the VAT, that excise taxes like tobacco and alcohol are highly prone to avoidance (people importing these goods themselves) and that many small businesses engage in income-splitting to make multiple use of the personal income tax allowances. So the problem is not the behaviour of a few banks; it is broader than that. As Stephen Fry put it, a culture has developed where it is the norm to fiddle taxes and expenses.
Can we expect a shrill attack from the Labour party on these disgraceful artful dodgers, or you and me, as I like to think of them, and a pledge to introduce draconian tax-enforcement measures backed up by a new regiment of tax inspectors with powers of arrest if you pay your local plumber in 'readies' and forget the VAT invoice? I don't think so!
Then, David Blackburn provides us with some prime Labour humbuggery. On Wednesday, just as 'Postman Pat' Johnson was trying not to stumble over his script, and as Labour MPs leaped to their feet to denounce cruel Tory cuts, 10 out of 13 of their European counterparts were busy passing a Bill in the Euro 'Klakhous' which will increase the Euro budget by 5.9% thus adding a further burden on British tax-payers of £900 million.
To quote the late, great Terry Thomas, "They're an absolute shower!"
Comments