Nope, plenty of small boutiques in the finance industry who do their own stuff, the effort required to fill in forms is de minimis over and above amount of effort required to find the information to enable to fill in the forms.

He could have declared that big earnings amount, paid the going rate of income tax on it and shoved the residue in a savings account to live off in the leaner years.

The problem is the tax laws. When there are multiple ways to manage the same income you’d be stupid not to select the most tax efficient.

Shame the media criticism always seems to fall on the individuals rather than the tax laws that allow them (or indeed us) to operate in this manner.

Shame Ken’s criticism always seems to fall on the individuals rather than the tax laws that allow them (or indeed us) to operate in this manner.

😉

Well I think criticism can also be levelled at politicians who rail about something that is a legal activity, tax avoidance, and they are also responsible for the tax laws so they can’t get off the hook. Trying to create a moral obligation separate and in addition to one’s legal one is a cop out for people who essentially aspire to be law makers. However, it is easy media friendly stuff so they can’t help themselves. But if you do it, you need to comfortable with the risk you run when your own affairs come under scrutiny.

Surely Ken is offering his “appearance services” to various parties so is totally legitimate in setting up a company to do this – what stinks is the likes of various highly paid employees who have one sole employer (& should by rights be on PAYE) being paid through a company to reduce their tax & NI costs. They’ve clamped down on the bottom rung of people claiming to be self employed now just clamping down on the upper rung, seems fair to me.

what stinks is the likes of various highly paid employees who have one sole employer (& should by rights be on PAYE) being paid through a company to reduce their tax & NI costs.

This could easily be resolved. Instead HMRC come up with the ambiguous mess that is IR35. There are even companies out there making good business by offering IR35 insurance and contract reviews, which illustrates what a mess the clause is.

Dickyboy – Member
Surely Ken is offering his “appearance services” to various parties so is totally legitimate in setting up a company to do this – what stinks is the likes of various highly paid employees who have one sole employer (& should by rights be on PAYE) being paid through a company to reduce their tax & NI costs. They’ve clamped down on the bottom rung of people claiming to be self employed now just clamping down on the upper rung, seems fair to me.

That’s exactly it (imo) and what Ken has been criticising. Andrew Gilligan has picked up on this and looked into Livingstone’s tax status and decided that Ken has been doing the same (which imo he hasn’t) and then tried to sling mud at him.

and then tried to sling mud at him.

It’s all pretty standard stuff. Livingstone has a long record of fighting racism, so they call him a racist. Livingstone has a long record of fighting for gay and lesbian rights, so they call him homophobic. Livingstone long before a Tory government eventually conceded that there could be no peace in NI without talking to Sinn Fein, argued that there could be no military solution to NI, so they called him a friend of terrorists.

So despite for years of being mercilessly ridiculed by sections of the press for his outspoken opposition to racism and his support for gay and lesbian rights, those very same critics now call him a homophobic racist. And of course they ignore his damning denunciation of terrorism after the London bombings which resulted in him receiving huge cross-party support. In fact it still represents one of greatest denunciation of terrorism I have ever heard. It’s worth recalling exactly what he said :

I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith – it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others – that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

Livingstone isn’t above criticism of course, far from it, but the need of some of his opponents to rely on baseless mudslinging is a measure of just how devoid of any coherent and constructive argument they are. And it’s imo a particularly depressing development in British politics.

His speech after the London bombs was superb. Truly superb.

Totally irrelevant to his hypocrisy over his tax arrangements though.

Not irrelevant to the mudslinging allegations though.