Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

This.

"George Osborne once advised people to use “clever financial products” that could have helped them reduce care costs and inheritance tax, a video from 2003 shows.

The re-emergence of the footage will be embarrassing for the chancellor as it comes amid controversy about the government’s lack of prosecutions of tax evaders who had accounts at HSBC in Switzerland.

Downing Street has also been criticised over the subsequent appointment of the former HSBC boss Stephen Green as a trade minister and the lack of investigation into the bank’s activities."


Is brilliant.


Almost on a par with the irony of the Tories attack on Ed Balls for saying people should get receipts for work carried out when it was their Treasury Minister David Gauke who most recently mooted the notion when he said "It is morally wrong to pay tradesmen cash in hand".


You couldn't make this stuff up. The political classes are a bunch of numpties who will do and say whatever it takes to convince the electorate that they're the best of a bad bunch and people are stupid and blinkered enough to chant their mantra for them.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

I like the way he keeps raising his eyebrows to make it seem as shifty as possible.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Ah, the old "evasion" versus "avoidance" ploy....

I mean, what sort of senior politician would use something that would reduce inheritance tax?

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Essentially my point Hugh. You'd need to be a pretty dull tool to think that one is any better than the other or to cheerlead on either's behalf.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Quite. I don't condemn anybody for using faults in the tax system to their advantage. Where I DO have a problem is politicians attacking others for using said loopholes when they themselves are using the exact same loopholes.

Hypocrisy.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Inheritance tax is only due once the person dies. Before that time whatever you do can't be avoiding tax, because it's not yet due.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

I like it when large crowds boo him, like at the olympics or Christmas lights switching on

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Might just be me but George Osbourne always looks shifty and no matter what he says even when its true just doesn't sit right I've got him in the same category as milliband cant put my finger on a specific just don't trust a thing they say.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Illegal versus legal you mean? :D

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

No illegal verses illegal, only difference is if you do it for a few quid you'll go to jail, aggressively do it for a few million and hmrc will accept an offer, normally after years of legal shenanigans in which the cash in question has accrued more in interest than the pittance hmrc collects

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Times

Being billed for £1.3 million isn't balanced by £400,000 in tax relief - and it's good/right that they have been penalised, as there was no legitimate business reason for the partnership, other than to evade tax.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Paywall link Kelvin MacKenzie

Seems they're all in it together. :D

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

Didnt it come to light that he pays the windows on account by bank transfer. So there is a paper trail. He was talking about cash with no paper trails.

Re: Osborne advised using financial loopholes to avoid tax and care costs.
 

I bet Ed Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper got plenty of receipts for all that family travel undertaken at public expense.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/labou...s-6574682.html

Nice to see poor folk like this not having to worry about the soaring cost of their children's travel.