Do As I Say......

The old adage 'Do as I say, not as I do' seems to be dogging the Labour these days - with the revelation that the Party has not paid any tax on its property company (Labour Party Properties Limited) for  the past eight years - despite earning million of pounds in rent.

I imagine that companies like Amazon and Starbucks must laughing up their sleeves at this news - since the Labour leader has, quite rightly, been critical of these organisations for using tax avoidance strategies to reduce or even eliminate their tax bills.

Now it has to be said that these tax avoidance strategies are all perfectly lawful and within the current tax rules - they nonetheless give the appearance that the organisations involved are using some very fancy footwork and expensive accountants which are not available to the ordinary man or woman in the street.

So the charge is that these 'tax avoiders' are not behaving terribly well - and not not, by implication, pulling their weight.

How embarrassing then that Labour Party Properties Limited (LPPL) has not paid a single penny of tax on its £6.3 million property portfolio since 2003.

According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, LPPL received £8.7 million in rental payments over the period - yet declared losses of £279,000 - which takes a bit of doing and, in almost any other walk of life, the person or persons responsible for such a dire financial performance - would be facing the sack.  

But in this case, presumably, reducing the LPPL tax bill to zero is regarded as a good thing - although I can see this coming back to haunt Labour in future because it looks and sounds completely mad.