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.

Am I just incredibly slow on the uptake? Have just seen the Cameron/Clegg thing as a public school prefect/fag thing. Has everyone else been commenting on this for years and I've just noticed it?

I think Cameron and Clegg get on well, quite genuinely. And apparently Osborne and Alexander get on very well too.

Apparently George's wallpaper empire used to make money and pay corporation tax but in recent years has declared very little taxable profit - although five directors have had £1m+ each out of it in the same period. Odd, that. (From tonight's Standard - sadly their website is playing up so I haven't been able to find the story online.)

found it - George's family business's tax affairs seem slightly more, um, odd than I'd recalled A profit of £161k on a turnover of £32m, really? George needs to sack his Dad.

Ocado make no proit on £171M! Eurotunnel only recently turned a profit on an enormous annual turnover. Besides, it's not at all unusual for a company to suffer in a recession.

And Edam, that story SATs the five directors took home just over £1M COLLECTIVELY.

At the end of the day, how do you stop people avoiding tax, short of sticking guns in their faces? The government just needs to spend the revenue it does recieve more wisely, instead of spending like mad and then complaining that the money is short. It would also help if the public sector was seen to be more frugal instead of just throwing around willy nilly as well.

www.talktalk.co.uk/news/article/charities-fear-tax-relief-backlash/43802/

And so the re-think begins!

"At the end of the day, how do you stop people avoiding tax"

I suppose one of the things you could do, is not have a tax regime that no-one understands, and the rich and well-advised can use to their advantage.

Don't forget that tax law is not made up by HMRC, it's made up by politicians. Complexity and illogical schemes are the responsibility of governments.

"The government just needs to spend the revenue it does recieve more wisely, instead of spending like mad"

I agree. How did we get into a position where we have to throw billions at bankrupt banks just to stop our economy collapsing? Some of the rich bankers pretend that if we aren't kind to them, they'll go and set up business somewhere else. Do you know a country that wants to take on the responsibility to bale out any more banks than they've already got? Or anyone who wants to deal with a bank that isn't underwritten by the bottomless pockets of it's home country's taxpayers?

Piglet, you've hit the nail right on the head. Funnily enough, I was thinking earlier today that I'm unaware of any of the big bank bosses leaving the country recently. Who'd have 'em....

Very true, piglet.

But it has to be simplification that is fair to the ordinary citizen, not yet another way of giving even more to those who have most. Osborne has, I think, flirted with the flat tax idea - but I don't want a system where the wealthiest only have to pay the same rate of tax as average earners and the poor (although it'd be a start, given at the moment most of them pay less...).

Also beware that they use "simplification" for schemes that are anything but.

Like the "simplification" of disability benefits. Which turned a two-tier system into a much more complicated four-tier system with time dependency. Result: most people get less, especially if they have something incurable.