Jimmy Carr K2 Tax Avoidance Whooo-Haaa

On Monday Jimmy Carr was ‘outed’ by The Times as a tax avoider – using a Jersey based company called K2 he paid just 1% tax on his £3.3 million-a-year income. The next day David Cameron said that this was bang out of order – see clip below.

This was a total coup for The Times, they were setting the agenda.

Thursday – in a fine piece of PR – Jimmy Carr came forward, said he’d made a terrible mistake and was no longer with K2.  He tweeted, “I met with a financial advisor and he said to me “Do you want to pay less tax? It’s totally legal.” I said “Yes” …I now realise I’ve made a terrible error of judgement…I’m no longer involved in it and will in future conduct my financial affairs much more responsibly. Apologies to everyone.”

The question remains, if our government and HMRC hate these schemes so much why aren’t they closed down? HMRC spends so much time and effort persecuting taxi drivers, hairdressers, plumbers – and the like – for buttons in investigations, but high earners always seem to find ways to slip  through loopholes.

Oh, and what about Osbourne?