How Much Can Cameron Get Away With?

So it comes down to this - what can Cameron admit and still get away with it? So far he has admitted that he sold his shares in his father's offshore investment fund for a mere £30,000. Loose change for Cameron and, he hopes, not too big an amount for the plebs to swallow. Of course this ignores his wife's nice little earner for being a "consultant" for Smythson's - a company that is based, for tax purposes, in a tax haven. This might explain why the Cameron's spend so much time out of the country as she commutes to her job every Monday morning. It ignores the fact that Cameron's father paid no tax in the UK for 30 years as his son was being educated at Eton and Oxford University. It also fails to address the question of George Osborne's financial affairs which remain completely opaque while he refuses to speak on the matter. Worse yet, there is no explanation as to why both Cameron and Osborne have consistently opposed any attempt by the EU to shed light on tax avoidance by the rich and greedy. Cameron once described Jimmy Carr's financial dealings as "immoral". Was Cameron's father immoral then? Apparently not for, according to Cameron, he remains "proud of my dad and what he did and the business he established and all the rest of it." Double standards? Why not, after all there is one law for them and another for the rest of us. This, of all the begrudging statements given by Cameron over the last few days, comes as close as we are likely to get to his mindset. Good at pointing the finger at others he doesn't like it much when others point at him and his immoral family.

Top Tory Defends Criminal Organizations.

Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, has admitted that the UK government could stop British overseas territories acting as tax havens if they wanted to. However, he added that it would be wrong to do so because it would mean job loses in those tax havens! "Ordinary workers losing their perfectly legitimate jobs in the steel industry is fine," a leading Tory spokesman told our reporter, "but bankers in the British Virgin Islands is a completely different thing. What would happen if Britain put a stop to all criminal activity in its overseas dependencies? It would be chaos. Billionaires around the world, poor souls, would be reduced to tears as they could no longer avoid tax, while criminal organizations would have to find some other way to launder their ill-gotten gains. Wealthy people don't pay tax, what about that does no one understand? They will always find loopholes in the tax system, so its only fair, right and proper that we should provide those loopholes for them legally. If not they would be forced to break the law making them into real criminals and we can't have that can we?"

Osborne Fails To Close Tax Loopholes Again.

George Osborne, the world's worst financial expert, has again conveniently failed to close yet another tax loophole. His apparent bid to raise £3.2 billion by way of a tax levy on Swiss bank accounts has brought in only £443 million as the tax avoiders, given ample warning by Osborne himself, have moved their stolen fortunes to other tax havens. Many of these other tax havens, such as Belize, Jersey and Bermuda, are British-run one way or the other and are, therefore, completely beyond the reach of the British government. George Osborne is said to be utterly devastated by this unfortunate turn of events and has been heard to explain that it all happened because tax avoiders are just too clever for him and have the uncanny ability to anticipate his every move after he tells them what he's going to do. "Their intelligence network is very sophisticated," he told our reporter. "Many of them own television sets and watch the BBC on a regular basis especially when I am bellowing my intentions from the rooftops. I've even moved my own fortune to another tax haven after I accidentally tipped myself of. It's all very disheartening." We asked a tax avoider who recently moved his own fortune out of Switzerland for his view; "It was a narrow escape I can tell you. If George hadn't broadcast his policy well in advance I might have been caught out. Fortunately, like many of my rich pals, I'm not stone deaf and can take a hint when I hear one. I just feel sorry for all the little people who failed to have rich ancestors and who can't move their fortunes about because they haven't got one to move."

More "Inadvertent" Loopholes Allow Tax Avoiders to Get Away With It Again.

The Tories have come to the shock realization that their measures to prevent their wealthy mates from squirreling away money in Switzerland in order to avoid paying tax have come to nothing after the Swiss patiently explained to our government that they could bugger off. "Try as we might," George Osborne explained to our reporter, "we simply cannot close the colossal loopholes we've deliberately created in our tax laws. We've tried, we really have, but its all too much for us. The problem with loopholes is that they have a life of their own and the more we try to close them the wider they seem to get. Essentially they are a force of nature and cannot be controlled by us poor mortals. I simply can't understand why rich people who avoided paying tax at 50p in droves aren't queuing up to pay tax at the new 45p band." The Treasury was equally apologetic; "We really are sorry that the £3.2 billion we thought we could get off our rich mates just isn't coming after all. It's all a great shame but we think we can make up the shortfall by flogging off parts of the NHS to the same rich mates who, try as they might, just can't find a way to pay their fair share of taxes. It's all very unfortunate. Still, we should all look on the bright side - at least our rich pals are happy and that's the main thing."

Why Only Little People Pay Taxes.

A Commons Committe looking into corporate tax avoidance on Monday discovered what has long puzzled us all - why large companies, despite making billions in profits, pay virtually no tax. The amazing answer is that they exploit loopholes the size of elephants in tax law deliberately put there by politicians. Essentially these companies are doing nothing illegal but, even where they are, it makes no difference whatsoever. Three years ago a list of 1,000 wealthy British citizens who secretly stash millions of pounds in Swiss bank accounts was handed to the authorities who did absolutely nothing about it at all. Many of the names on the list were obviously businessmen, but it is believed that many were also public figures and, more to the point, many were politicians. The reason behind the tax loopholes couldn't be more plain - corrupt politicians are deliberately avoiding tax and are actively supporting vague, contradictory and ineffective tax laws because it enables them to steal money. There is, of course, a simple way to cut through all this nonsense and that is to replace our tax laws, aimed only at small people, with two simple principles - any attempt to avoid tax for any reason should be deemed to be a crime and any company that avoids tax should not be allowed to operate in this country. Job done. So what do you think the chances are that such a principle would be adopted by the likes of George Osborne and David Cameron? Absolutely none whatsoever.

Pots Call Kettles Black.

MP's on the Public Accounts Committee have issued a report today on the practice of paying public employees through private companies in order for them to avoid tax. This scam, widespread in the Civil Service, has now been revealed to be similarly widespread at the BBC. The Committe is quite right that this is little better than fraud as those in public employment pretend that they are actually working for a private company and their employers turn a blind eye. However, it must also be said that MP's can hardly take the moral high ground as their expenses continue to be nothing more than a sick joke. They might well pay their taxes through PAYE as public employees but what does that matter when they are allowed to claim back the cost of everything from a can of dog food to a £2 million pound London mansion? They have much in common with higher paid civil servants and BBC "personalities" - all are lazy free-loading scroungers and all of them are content to stand aside as the disabled and the unemployed are villified and punished for being nothing more than unlucky.

Cameron Gets Sanctimonious.

Like many good comedians Jimmy Carr is often just a little bit waspish. His famous joke about Barclays Bank and tax avoidance was funny because it was cutting and it was true. Lets hope he can handle the jibes of his fellow comedians over his tax arrangements that are now bound to come. For his part Mr.Carr has been quite straightforward explaining, without a blush, that he only pays the tax he has to. No false morality, no social conscience - its all about the money and nothing else. Hardly surprising then that he has provoked a great deal of outrage in the country when the disabled are being left destitute to assuage the financial markets. And no one is more outraged than David Cameron who has described Mr.Carr's tax arrangements as "morally wrong." No argument there but it begs two rather interesting questions. First, if dodging tax is "morally wrong" why has his government done absolutely nothing to close the loopholes that allow the wealthy to do it on a daily basis? Indeed why was David Cameron, only yesterday, gloating over the French millionaires he expects to quit France soon to come and live in tax haven Britain? Then there's the question of his own father who has made dodging paying tax into an artform. Is David Cameron suggesting that his own father, Ian Cameron, was "morally wrong?" And, if so, what does that say about the Prime Minister himself who quite happily pocketed the money his father left him in his will? Predictably enough Downing Street issued a statement that said it did not want to comment on what was a private matter for the Cameron family. I'll bet they don't. The hypocrisy of David Cameron is now well known and well understood, while his greed and duplicity are fast becoming plain. He and his rich mates are not the solution to our problems, they are the problem and the sooner he and his fellow spivs are kicked out of office the better.

Tories Revel In Corruption.

There has never been any doubt that the Tories are two-faced - one look at their last election manifesto demonstrates that quite conclusively - and that they are unbelievably brutal - their recent record in terms of the disabled is proof positive of how evil they can be. However, while their corruption is nothing short of legendary, their willingness to rub our noses in it is something new. This seems to be the result of two factors - the recession which they view as an opportunity to be as vicious as they've always wanted to be and a monumental arrogance that was always there but was carefully hidden. Today it has been revealed that Tory MP Nadine Dorries is helping herself to nearly £40,000 of taxpayers money in order to finance her daughter's education in, of all things, the law. While Phillipa Dorries is studying full-time at the BPP Law School in London it seems that she's also employed full-time as her mother's "office manager." A busy girl, apparently, who is certainly getting a first-rate education in plundering the public purse if nothing else. Meanwhile David Cameron has been busy rolling out the red carpet for any French businessmen who want to avoid paying taxes at home and is openly boasting about his project to turn Britain into a haven for tax avoiders. This, he explains with a smirk, helps Britain to become "more competative." How exactly? These French businessmen will not be bringing their businessess with them and they will not, by the very nature of their invitation to live here, be paying any tax to us. However, they can be expected to do what wealthy British tax avoiders do - "donate" to their benefactors, the Tory party. As a bonus it will also undermine the democratic choice of the French people to make wealthy Frenchmen pay their fair share in tax - two things that the Tories really hate, democracy and fairness.