Tag Archives: george osborne

Millionaire George Osborne denies he’s a highest rate taxpayer

8:42am Thu March 22nd

Speaking on the Today Programme earlier, George Osborne has denied he is a highest rate taxpayer who would benefit from the 5% cut he announced yesterday. His £134,565 salary puts him just £15,435 shy of the higher rate (aka additional rate) tax band.

When challenged by Evan Davis that he had other sources of income which would put him over the line, Osborne retorted:

“I’m not, actually.”

But the Register of Member’s Financial Interests reveals he has been in receipt of rent from a property in London since at least July 2011.

What property in London can you rent for less than £16,000 per year?

UPDATE (09:14) »According to DirectGov, rental income is still treated as a business, so not taxed as earned income. Is this how Osborne can make his claims today?

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UPDATE (09:28) »This is the house which Osborne's family lived in until they moved into Downing Street at exactly the same time the rental entry appears on the register. We somehow doubt you could rent this for less than £307 per week.

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UPDATE (09:41) »From DirectGov: “Your taxable profit from property letting is added to your overall income. If this is more than your tax allowances you'll pay tax on it at normal Income Tax rates.” -- unless you've set up some other legal vehicle?

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UPDATE (10:31) »The Guardian's Polly Curtis is reporting that Osborne owns a 15% share in family wallpaper firm Osborne & Little. But the firm made a staggering loss in 2010-2011 and didn't pay dividends, so wouldn't contribute to his taxable income for the last year.

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UPDATE (11:45) »Scrapbook has spoken to a tax expert about methods which Osborne may have used to keep his rental income out of his taxable income. The simplest would seem to be a joint ownership with his wife owning a higher percentage of the property- Osborne then paying tax on less than half of the income. Alternatively, he could have extensively refurbished the property after moving into Number 11, to count the amount of the expenditure as deducatable. Both of these methods are, at present, legal

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UPDATE (14:35) »Looks like it's “no comment” on the cabinet's tax arrangements:

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Number 10: "Tax arrangements are private between [ministers] and HMRC"

March 22, 2012 3:16 pm via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pollycurtis

polly curtis

Newspaper front pages slam government over Granny Tax

7:09am Thu March 22nd

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Daily Mail: Osborne picks the pockets of the pensioners
Metro: Gran Theft Auto
The Sun: The Wrong Trousers
Daily Mirror: Mugged!
Western Mail: Pensioners to lose £3bn as Osborne cuts top tax rate
The Scotsman: Osborne raids the aged to aid the waged

You know your Budget coverage hasn't gone well when (mostly loyal) Sun splashes on "Osborne's dodgy plans on fuel, tax & pensions"

March 22, 2012 6:34 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@SophyRidgeSky

Sophy Ridge

Could this be Osborne’s version of Labour’s 10p tax disaster?

Budget Nasties: the bits George Osborne forgot to mention

2:14pm Wed March 21st

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UPDATE (16:10) »They are calling the pensioners' tax allowance freeze the Granny Tax now, with Ed Balls telling the Commons that 'This looks like a tax grab on grannies'. Oh, dear.

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The budget has been delivered, and as usual the devil is in the detail. Now experts and politicos will be delving into the small print to find out all of the little changes and measures that George Osborne didn’t dwell on- those stings in the tail that will be causing the government trouble in the next few days. Here, we will be bringing them to you as they become apparent.

Osborne has introduced a new corporate tax loophole which will cost the UK £1 billion and take £4 billion from developing countries used as tax havens by British businesses (from ActionAid).
4.5 million pensioners, nearly half of all pensioners in the country, will be worse off in real terms as a result of Osborne’s Granny Tax (more from Gransnet).
The government has admitted that cuts to income tax relief could slash major donations to charities, which rely on public generosity (more at HM Treasury).
The budget hints at a further £10.5bn welfare cuts still to come (more at The Guardian)
The plans announced in the budget today are set to hit pensioners hard as the government pockets £1.2 billion by freezing age-related tax allowances. Freezing the personal tax allowance means a tax rise by the back door for around 150,000 pensioners who could face having to work longer with another review of the pension age – whilst Osborne drops the top rate of tax by 5% (more at Citywire).
The tax hike was presented as a “tax simplification” by Osborne – but experts quickly spotted the extra burden for some of the nation’s most vulnerable.
The average family with children will lose £253 per year as a result of the measures contained in the budget- with the average household income reduced by 1% – but by 2% for the poorest 20% of the population (more at The Daily Express).
Around 14,000 British millionaires will keep getting richer, paying £40,000 less in taxes each year as a result of the 5% tax cut given to them by the Chancellor (more at The Guardian).
The OBR say that cutting the 50p tax rate will do nothing for the economy, making “no … material adjustments to the economy forecast” (more at HM Treasury).
The basic rate of tax threshold will fall from £34,370 to £32,245 between 2013 and 2014, hitting the squeezed middle once again, as the richest have their tax bills cut (more at HM Treasury).
200,000 – 300,000 more people will start paying a higher rate of tax, with the threshold starting at £41,450 (more at The Telegraph)
Following the budget, the OBR have dropped their forecast for business investment this year from 7.7% to just 0.7% (from Will Straw).
The OBR have also increased their forecast for public sector job cuts up by 20,000 to 730,000 (from George Eaton).

Have we missed another Budget Nasty? comment below or tweet us @PSbook.

Osborne approves £500m bonuses despite RBS missing lending targets

10:52am Mon February 13th

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The chancellor is to approve bonuses of £500m to bankers at publicly-owned RBS despite missing its lending targets to businesses. While the government has erected a smokescreen in the form of departmental “reviews” of performance related pay in Whitehall, the Telegraph has reported RBS has missed its share of the Project Merlin lending targets.

RBS spinners have insisted that an obscure measure shows it has met its Merlin obligations for the year. But business minister Mark Prisk had previously slammed the so-called “stretch targets” as not ambitious enough and stated they were not part of project Merlin:

“The Government [was] not satisfied that these were sufficiently ambitious and pushed them to set a more demanding target – which was what was agreed and published in the Merlin agreement.”

Despite this, additional figures for UK businesses paint a telling picture. Revealing that during 2011 net lending was negative in every quarter, amounting to a net lending sum of minus £9.6 billion, meaning that more loans were recalled than issued.

Lacking any genuine magical qualities, perhaps Project Merlin should have been named after Paul Daniels instead.

UPDATE (11:29) »The quotes are now coming back to haunt Cameron, who boasted in March last year: “we've got another £10bn for small businesses from the banks”

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George Osborne: “Please Mervyn, can I have some more?”

3:20pm Thu February 9th

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With the news that the Bank of England is to inject more money into the economy (again) through Quatitative Easing, perhaps the chancellor felt a little like Oliver Twist as he went cap in hand to Threadneedle Street (again).

It’s certainly apposite to reprise this quote from George Osborne in 2009:

“Printing money is the last resort of desperate governments when all other policies have failed.”

This is his own version of Cameron’s “no more top-down reorganisations” promise — to be trotted out again and again and again.

Shadow minister Rachel Reeves joins the Tories (at chess)

8:55am Thu February 9th

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Rachel Reeves, shadow chief secretary to the treasury, has seen a lightning rise since she entered Parliament in 2010 — but should that be unexpected of the UK’s former under-14 junior chess champion?

Reeves attended the closing dinner of the London Chess Classic 2011, Chess Magazine report. During the meal, she took part in a match alongside fellow MP (and brother of the London Mayor) Jo Johnson, advised by game legend Gary Kasparov.

Need any help? Osborne attempts to psych-out Reeves

In a tactical display that may be starting to worry CCHQ, Reeves won the match, finishing with the aggressive but dubiously-named move of the “bishop’s sac”. Even chief Tory electoral-strategist George Osborne (who moonlights as the Chancellor of the Exchequer) dropped by to take some notes.

It looks like Ed Miliband and his Rubik’s cube have a little competition on the Labour frontbench.

Baldemort’s revenge: how senior Tories look without hair

10:28am Thu February 2nd

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After PMQs saw David Cameron level a “baldemort” jibe at Liam Byrne yesterday, Paul Goodman over at ConservativeHome has reimagined some senior Tories, minus the hair.

Surprisingly given the folklore of his blonde mop, Boris doesn’t look too bad as a shiny slaphead. Osborne and Cameron, however, don’t seem to fare so well.

Given the volume of commentary on his growing bald patch, this does not augur well for the prime minister.

Deserting “Captain Osborne” ordered back on board the UK economic ship

12:55pm Wed January 18th

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Following the shocking discussion between the captain of the Costa Concordia and a coast guard, a similar transcript has now emerged, courtesy of blogger Alex Andreou, of a conversation involving Captain Osborne, having run the economic ship aground on the rocks of zero-growth and soaring unemployment.

Captain: At this moment the UK Economy is listing.
Cost Guard: There are some bankers who are coming down the ladder on the bow. Go back in the opposite direction, get back on the Economy, and tell me how many people there are and what they have on board. Tell me if there are children, women, disabled, unemployed, NHS patients and what type of help they need. And you tell me the number of each of these categories. Is that clear?
(Silence.)
Listen Osborne, perhaps you have saved yourself from the crisis but I will make you look very bad. I will make you pay for this. Dammit, go back on board!
(Noise can be heard in the background. Apparently other IMF officials are shouting to each other in the same room about “the rating, the rating”)
Captain: Please …
Cost Guard: There is no ‘please’ about it. Get back on board. Assure me you are going back on board!

You can read the full transcript over at Sturdyblog.

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