Pensions Galore!

The Telegraph had a detailed report on Jeremy Corbyn's tax affairs the other day which highlighted that as well as filing his return late the Labour leader forgot to include the earnings from his state pension of £6,000 a year.

But as regular readers know, Jezza was almost a contemporary of mine (very nearly) at the public services union NUPE (now part of Unison) and so he must surely be in receipt of an occupational pension from Unison as well, given that he's 66 going on 67.

Apparently the Labour Party has backed away from calls for all MPs to publish their tax returns, presumably on the basis that they don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry crawling all over their financial affairs.

Conservative MP, Andrew Tyrie, chair of the Treasury Select Committee was quick to exploit Jeremy's gaffe by asking how the Labour leader could run the nation's finances if he could even mange dos own tax return.

Boom, boom!

  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/jeremy-corbyn-admits-failing-to-include-state-pension-income-on/

Jeremy Corbyn admits failing to include state pension income on his hand-written tax return

On Sunday Mr Corbyn suggested that all MPs should follow David Cameron to ensure that "everybody knows what influences are at play" 

By Steven Swinford, Kate McCann and Laura Hughes 

Jeremy Corbyn is facing questions after failing to include thousands of pounds of income from his state pension on his tax return.

Mr Corbyn, who turned 65 in May 2014, received a state pension of around £6,000 a year but did not include details of the income on the hand-written return he published on Monday.

He also failed to declare on the form income from a pension from his time in local Government, although Labour insisted it had been taxed at source.

Labour yesterday said that all tax due on his pensions had been paid and insisted that details of his income from his retirement funds had been included on a separate sheet.

Political Doldrums (29/06/15)

As I arrived in London in 1983 to take up a post as a full-time official with NUPE (the National Union of Public Employees), Jeremy Corbyn was just taking his leave having been elected as the Labour MP for Islington North in May of that year.

None of my new NUPE colleagues had a good word to say about their ex-colleague, perhaps because no one shared Jeremy's fantasy brand of politics. 

Nothing I've heard since then has caused me to argue with my colleagues' opinion although I've never ceased to be amazed at the way in which trade unions often get rid of their least talented officials by packing them off to the House of Commons.

The only thing I would say about Jeremy is that he is a model of consistency: consistently wrong that is, as a backer of Michael Foot's election manifesto in 1983 (dubbed the longest suicide note in history) and Ed Miliband's doomed pitch to become Prime Minister in 2015.

But the fact that Jeremy Corbyn gets on the Labour leadership ballot paper while someone like Mary Creagh drops out (due to a lack of nominations from fellow MPs) tells you that the People's Party is set to remain in the political wilderness for some time to come. 

Backlash Begins (16/02/15)

Ed Miliband has, as I expected been accused of rank hypocrisy over his attempt to paint himself and the Labour Party as 'whiter than white' over tax avoidance.

Ed Miliband is personally exposed by a family arrangement to change Ralph Miliband's will by a 'deed of variation' which allowed them to re-allocate the father's assets (even after his death) in a way that minimised or avoided a big inheritance tax bill.

So instead of their mother acquiring all of the family's property assets, the two brothers were allocated 20% each while their mum retained 60%.

Now this was perfectly lawful and most people would say it was eminently sensible as well, but you can't dress it up as anything other than tax avoidance or minimising your tax bill, I'm afraid.

And other skeletons are starting to tumble out of Labour's closet as this article from The Sunday Times demonstrates only too well. 

Soon we'll be on to people who are not well-known Labour donors but prominent supporters such as Sir Alex Ferguson though the public won't be interested in such a fine distinction, if you ask me.