Yes, that’s today’s excuse from Red Ken about why he avoided £50,000 of tax/National Insurance by channelling his earnings through a limited company rather than as an employee of is various ‘engagers’, or as a Schedule D* self-employed taxpayer.
OK, so it might not have been as much as £50,000 – it may have been more – but this figure was not calculated by a Ken-bashing swivel eyed right winger like me. It was Richard Murphy; he who, if you asked him if tax avoidance was worse than paedophilia, would have to pause and think about his answer.
Anyway, speaking on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show this morning, Ken said that the £50,000 saved enabled him to give jobs to two people. Clearly Ken isn’t an accountant or economist, but it seems he implicitly recognises the phenomenon of tax incidence and the extent to which much business taxation ends up being borne by the employees – his reasoning for his tax avoidance pretty well says as much. So, his tax avoidance helped create jobs. He could have added the observation that this was an example of him choosing how to spend that £50,000 rather then the government doing so, but let’s take that as read.
His response also acknowledges that fact that tax removes money from the economy. Again, this is a significant departure from the conventional nonsensical leftist line that reducing public expenditure (and thus, by definition, reducing taxation now or in the future) is ‘taking money out of the economy’. Not that Livingstone would see it this way, but when you’re still digging in as deep a hole as he is, I’m surprised he can see anything.
* Showing my age now. Heck, I still find myself talking about SC60’s** sometimes.
** My fellow accountants will understand.
Vir Cantium 