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So George Osborne is "surprised" to learn that the rich pay next to no tax...

14 replies

MayaAngelCool · 10/04/2012 21:56

The greasy little oik.

Can we list the politicians who don't treat the general public as though we're all dumb as shit?

OP posts:
legoballoon · 10/04/2012 21:58

Didn't Panorama feature his off-shore millions a year or two ago?

We're all in it together, ha ha ha (sardonic laugh emoticon)

ivykaty44 · 10/04/2012 22:01

really - I am so shocked to know that he is so fucking out of touch - well whatever next Hmm

aJumpedUpPantryBoy · 10/04/2012 22:03

Either he thinks we are stupid or he is stupid - or perhaps it's a magnificent combination of both

dapplegrey · 11/04/2012 07:25

Presumably this tax evasion was also going on when Labournwasnin power. Did they take any steps tp prevent it?

meditrina · 11/04/2012 07:45

He's the first Chancellor I can recall who has commissioned the Revenue to look at individual cases and then make public what was found.

None of it is using new provisions brought in since the election. So perhaps this was long overdue.

I should imagine that much of this is new to him. Osbourne is asset rich, but cash poor (the millions are in family firm shares which haven't paid a dividend for a while) so he doesn't need any such schemes at present.

twofingerstoGideon · 11/04/2012 14:35

Osbourne is asset rich, but cash poor

There's poor, and then there's poor...

ttosca · 11/04/2012 17:05

The reason people are so concerned about tax evasion now, under the Tory scum, is because the public are being asked to pay for a financial crisis not of their own making, through austerity measures.

Secondly, not only are the public being asked to pay for the casino gambling and racket of financial sector, but we're simultaneously being told that "We're tall in this together".

So people are naturally skeptical and looking for ways in which the the wealthiest and the banks which caused the crisis pay the largest share of the crisis, instead of single mothers, the disabled, the poorest, and other vulnerable people.

George Osborne knew very well that there is an enormous amount of tax avoidance going on:

Why is George Osborne surprised about tax avoidance? I warned of its scale in 2008

As I am on a train from Paris right now I?m only just catching up with this morning?s news about HMRC showing George Osbone 20 anonymised tax returns revealing that just 20 people in the UK have avoided £145 million of tax between them.

The story should not be news. I warned in 2008 that the scale of tax avoidance was far higher than HMRC calculated. This was in my report ?The Missing Billions? published by the TUC that year, in which I said there was at least £13 billion of personal ta avoidance in the UK and a further £8 billion of excess reliefs granted to very wealthy people. www.tuc.org.uk/touchstone/missingbillions/1missingbillions.pdf (apologies ? links are harder on the iPad).

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/04/10/why-is-george-osborne-surprised-about-tax-avoidance-i-warned-of-its-scale-in-2008/


Finally, George Osborne and the Tories will certainly not significantly clamp down on tax avoidance. The reason being that the Tories are ideologically committed to reshaping the economy using supply-side reforms. This means a low-tax regime for the rich and for business, and generally making the UK a 'business friendly environment'.

Even if we weren't in the middle of a financial crisis, they would be ideologically committed to a smaller state and lower taxes.

This means continuation of Thatcher's neo-liberal reforms of privitisation, deregulation, labour reforms, etc. The idea behind this - or ostensibly the justification - is the 'trickle-down' theory. The 'trickle-down' theory asserts, contrary to empirical evidence, that if you keep sucking corporate and wealthy cock, then they will create wealth for the greater good of the nation, which will 'trickle-down' to the masses.

This is what 'trickle-down' theory looks like in fact:

i.imgur.com/QDOAg.jpg

sieglinde · 11/04/2012 20:10

But only lower taxes for the VERY RICH. Ordinary families and individuals are paying more than before in VAT and the higher rate tax reforms won't have much impact on those earning less than 100k.

ttosca · 11/04/2012 22:38

Yes, lower taxes for the wealthiest - which is why they call it 'trickle-down' economics.

Corporation tax is reduced, so the shortfall is made up from taxation from the poor and middle-classes.

dapplegrey · 13/04/2012 17:45

Maybe the Inland Revenue should start this investigation by looking in to Ken Livingstone's tax evasion.

twofingerstoGideon · 13/04/2012 18:05

dapple

Why him, particularly? There are plenty of people they could be investigating, all as bad as each other.

It does make me laugh when someone posts like dapplegrey... dragging a naughty leftie into every thread commenting on the Tory aresholes, as if we are all so blindly bigoted that we imagine left=moral, right=immoral. FYI, dapple, not everyone who criticises the Tories (either their policies or individual cretins like Osborne, Cameron or Gove) thinks the sun shines out of Labour's collective arse.

The Tories disgust me, but, in the interests of balance, IMO Tony Blair was the one of the biggest hypocrites that ever lived, sucking up to businesses and banks to the detriment of all of the rest of us. For the reason why people are so angry about this now see ttosca's post above...

sieglinde · 14/04/2012 15:24

Yup, it's working and middling people who are actually being asked to shoulder the whole burden of deficit reduction, while the rich get off scot-free. I hate 'em all equally, because they all - equally - seem to hate me.

Tryharder · 19/04/2012 11:06

I think what Dapple is keen to point out is that everyone is very quick to blame Tories when Labour are equally guilty. You see lots of comments like "Tory scum" but never "Labour scum".

At least the Tories don't pretend to be on the side of the working classes.

It doesn't matter who you vote for, we are screwed either way.

ReactionaryFish · 19/04/2012 11:12

I'm quite happy to say Labour Scum. How you can say anything else when confronted with the likes of Blair, Brown and Balls is beyond me. I'm sure Miliband would be scum as well, just too ineffectual.

That doesn't change the fact that I found Osborne's comment enormously disingenuous. People must pay the tax required by law. If the law is such that people can fix their affairs so as to pay less tax and George Osborne doesn't like it, he needs to ask Parliament to alter the law to fix that. HE'S THE FUCKING CHANCELLOR. time to take responsibility for simplifying the tax regime and stop bleating, George.

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