George Osborne is stupid or naive or a liar. Or all of the above.

[DashingRedhead]

Apparently he's shocked at the tiny amount of tax paid by the richest in the country.

But I'm not. And he's Chancellor of the Exchequer. And I'm not.

In fact he's worse than a liar, he's a c*ks*ker. How dare he think we are that stupid!!!

Rubbish, it's common knowledge.

UK shocked that George Osborne expects them to believe he?s shocked at millionaire tax avoiders

The entire population of the UK have expressed their total shock that Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has expressed his shock that some of the UK?s richest people have organised their finances so that they pay virtually no income tax.

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Mr Osborne revealed he had seen ?anonymised copies? of tax returns which showed him that some of the highest earners are completely taking the piss.

He did not outline any new proposals, but insisted he was so crippled with shock at the revelations that he would have a jolly good think about taking some action.

?After finding out that some high earners pay an income tax averaging at just 10%, I had to have a lie down,? he told the Daily Telegraph.

?Seriously, I thought I was going to faint.?

?I was even more shocked to discover that I am the only person in the UK who didn?t know that this was going on.?

?Me, the chancellor!?
High earners

He said the returns he had seen had shown him the 20 biggest tax avoiders had legally reduced their income tax bills by a total of £145m in a year.

?I can?t reveal the details of the individuals involved, but as I read through it I was saying to myself ?I know him, had dinner with her last Tuesday, I was best man at his wedding, I?m related to him,? he revealed.

?How could I have not known about this??

?People must think I?m either a liar or incredibly stupid!?

Voters have denied that they think Mr Osborne is either of those things.

?He?s both,? they confirmed.

newsthump.com/2012/04/10/uk-shocked-that-george-osborne-expects-them-to-believe-hes-shocked-at-millionaire-tax-avoiders/

I suspect that he knows exactly how it is done, given that he's the heir to a wallpaper empire and went to an elite public school and has surrounded himself with other multi-millionaires. If he doesn't know how it's done, he's really Not Been Paying Attention.

Didn't know much about how it was done?! I should imagine his personal tax/financial advisers have informed him fully on exactly how to minimise his own tax bill in the past. He would merely have chosen how aggressive he could afford to be in his tax avoidance schemes if he wanted to get on in politics. If he was surprised by anything, it was probably how many merely comfortably off middle class people were trying to join the bandwagon that was intended only to be utilised by a few of his friends and party donors... and those little people, of course, will be the only people chucked off the bandwagon by any reforms.

Nobody pays more tax than they have to, surely? I don't know why George is lying about this but he was probably damned whatever he said. Tax avoidance will be around for as long as there is tax. People will always think that they can spend the money they have earnt a lot more wisely than the government can.

Definitely neither - he is smart enough to pretend to be both

Josephine, the issue is some people aren't paying as much tax as they should - and that means other people have to pay more. This is particularly irksome when it's the extremely rich paying 10% or less and ordinary or low-paid people shelling out a much bigger proportion of their income.

You might think it's big and clever to avoid tax, but all that means is dumping the bill on someone else. Probably someone who earns less and doesn't have the funds to pay for specialist tax advice.

Lots of people pay more tax than they have to. I pay more tax than I have to. I could pay a tax adviser to set up all sorts of complicated schemes for me, enabling him to make a lovely big profit out of me (but it is encouraging private enterprise, isn't it?...), me to save a small amount of money and for the tax man to lose out altogether. Wahay. What a great idea. And then I could bemoan the state of the roads, the hospitals, the schools, and law enforcement and claim it's because my hard earned tax money isn't spent properly, as though I've actually provided a particularly big percentage of my cash in tax. And the money I don't spend in tax I can use to pay for private healthcare and private education, and if I'm rich enough, I can get myself a helicopter and private jet, and private security firm to guard my properties and my own personal island elsewhere, and then I don't even need to bother about the state of the roads or even the state of law enforcement. I will at some point bemoan the lack of good employees for my company, though, and wonder why the state is incapable of educating anyone properly.

Its a bit nihilistic really, if the capitalist class continue impoverishing workers then surely no one will either work for them or pay for the goods produced.

I wonder how they'd get the oil to fuel their helicopters.

On R4 this morning it was being discussed that many rich tax dodgers are now claiming that tax avoidance helps charities. They can give to charity to avoid some income tax. Surely though if we continue down this course, we now have the poor funding charity through taxation and the rich avoiding taxation with the charity sector expected to take up the work of the state but not having the same level of accountability. It's already been said that charities often set their agenda according to the whims of rich benefactors. In short if charities are unaccountable to the state, they are unaccountable to us but answerable to corporations and rich individuals.

This Government with its idea of shrinking state provision and replacing it with social enterprise seems not to grasp the basic principle that in time the tax burden on the worker will rise, standards will fall and whilst investors take their divs and also give charitable donations, they will increasingly take over the business of the state via the back door.

As for Osborne, I'm actually inclined to think he is naive and way out of his depth. It's a cabinet full of pals, not chosen according to ability.

He does grasp it, I think, minimasmouse. I don't buy it that he's a thicko. None of them are thickos. The scenario you describe is what they want. It's the only conclusion, because nothing else makes any sense.

I think Dave and Osborne are thick, they have had their day, the wage master rules supreme and the antagonism between the landed and the capitalist is still apparent esp with Osborne. The guys a prat, if it wasn't for a fate of birth no one would allow him to manage a lottery syndicate let alone the economy.

Well at least he's doing something about it. Which is more than Labour did during their long tenure at No. 10.

Hes all of the above.

Presumably Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were similarly stupid, naive or liars? If not, why didn't they do something about it during their long term at the exchequer?

Freida-

See my answer to your question on the other tax avoidance thread in politics or in news.

"This Government with its idea of shrinking state provision... seems not to grasp the basic principle that... investors... will increasingly take over the business of the state via the back door."

They do realise. That's the point of it.

Sorry, just repeating AnxiousP.

ttosca - but you don't answer the question above. Were Brown and Darling similarly stupid/naive/lying? If no why did they not blow the whistle during their terms in office?

I think most people recognise the Tories stand for a small state versus Labour's big, fat, waddling state. That's why they vote for them.

And George Osborne is very bright.

Richard Murphy is fairly extreme in his view of tax reform. If a company earning below the threashold registers for VAT (this is allowed but only compulsory once a certain level of earnings is reached) RM would count this as tax avoidance. I think that's pretty silly.

I wish we could see the details of the tax avoidance measures that were used in those HMRC samples.

Haha, if you voted for the Tories in the hope of a small state, you must be well cut up by Cameron increasing the size of the Lords by 16 percent last year. 117 new peers, no less.

But in fact the people shouting loudest for a "small state" don't usually want a small state.

They want to get their commercial trotters in the tax trough. And for that they need a government that collects lots of taxes. The NHS as an opportunity for profit, etc.

And by the way, I would dearly love to have seen Labour crack down on tax avoidance.

Like Tough on Crime, it's one of those things where they tried to out-Tory the Tories to get the imagined middle vote, alas.

It's only come into the spotlight now because of the populace repeatedly shouting about tax avoidance while the Tories cut incomes of the working poor and essential services for the disabled.

And we're yet to see what actually comes of this. Especially as the first thing Osborne did was link "cracking down on tax avoidance" to "charities losing funding".

It was shameful that Labour didn't get the tax avoiders, but they wouldn't: it's one of the points where politics and money have differing aims, and money wins. No government will ever do this, it's off the table. Which is why we have to judge them by how they approach personal and small business taxation. It stinks but there it is.

Can someone explain to me what he has discovered though? BTW I hate George Osbourne and his ilk so this is a genuine question. From what I read he has discovered millionaires giving money to charity and claiming tax relief on that - but since they are actually giving the money away, it's not the dodgy sort of tax avoidance that has everyone up in arms, surely. Like if someone gives £1m to Cancer Research they actually have to give that money away and no longer get the enjoyment of that income so tax relief is appropriate. Whereas if they have structured some dodgy offshore company to buy a house to avoid stamp duty they are genuinely buying a house and enjoying it on better terms than the average person which is completely wrong.

What am I missing here? Is this not like giftaid on a bigger scale? Or is the implication that these are not real charities? In which case that's not a tax avoidance question but a fraud question.

AnxiousPanxious - Do you have an iPhone or an iPad by any chance? Or a Mac computer?