Taxing Problems
Taxes and benefits are making headlines again - only this time there's a crazy role reversal thing going on.
The Chancellor - George Osborne, a Conservative of course - announced the other day that child benefit would be ended in 2013 - for people earning more than £44,000 a year.
Why he asked (quite reasonably it seemed to me) - should poorer families continue to subsidise wealthier families - under a benefits system that was designed in the last century?
Predictably those who will lose out are making a terrible fuss - they don't want to lose a £1,000 or more a year, if they can help it - but they never stop to ask how fair it is for them to be receiving this public handout in the first place.
To make matters worse - Yvette Cooper, Labour's Treasury spokesperson - comes along and says that the coalition government's plan is an outrageous attack on child benefit.
And here I thought that the Labour party was in favour of redistributing wealth - but it seems that I was wrong all along.
On a related but different subject - Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader has been making noises recently about tax avoidance.
Apparently Ed wrote to the Lib Dem leader - Nick Clegg - demanding to know what he and the coalition government were doing to tackle tax avoidance.
Good point - because no one likes to see tax avoiders and benefit cheats - milking the system for all its worth.
Imagine my surpise then to read in the Sunday Times at the weekend - that Ed Miliband and his partner - have avoided more than £135,000 in capital gains tax on the sale of their three properties.
Quite legitimately - of course - by the simple expedient of being unmarried.
So it really is a topsy turvy world out there - not everything is always as it seems.
The Chancellor - George Osborne, a Conservative of course - announced the other day that child benefit would be ended in 2013 - for people earning more than £44,000 a year.
Why he asked (quite reasonably it seemed to me) - should poorer families continue to subsidise wealthier families - under a benefits system that was designed in the last century?
Predictably those who will lose out are making a terrible fuss - they don't want to lose a £1,000 or more a year, if they can help it - but they never stop to ask how fair it is for them to be receiving this public handout in the first place.
To make matters worse - Yvette Cooper, Labour's Treasury spokesperson - comes along and says that the coalition government's plan is an outrageous attack on child benefit.
And here I thought that the Labour party was in favour of redistributing wealth - but it seems that I was wrong all along.
On a related but different subject - Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader has been making noises recently about tax avoidance.
Apparently Ed wrote to the Lib Dem leader - Nick Clegg - demanding to know what he and the coalition government were doing to tackle tax avoidance.
Good point - because no one likes to see tax avoiders and benefit cheats - milking the system for all its worth.
Imagine my surpise then to read in the Sunday Times at the weekend - that Ed Miliband and his partner - have avoided more than £135,000 in capital gains tax on the sale of their three properties.
Quite legitimately - of course - by the simple expedient of being unmarried.
So it really is a topsy turvy world out there - not everything is always as it seems.
