Over the last few months HMRC boss Dave Hartnett has got it in the neck for giving some big businesses (such as Vodafone and Goldman Sachs) some amazingly generous tax deals, losing The Revenue an estimated 25 billion in, errum, revenue. Why give these big companies such generous tax breaks?
There is video of him being questioned in the Treasury Select Committee late last year about this and he looks extremely uncomfortable. Some sources have suggested he bent over backwards for a few free meals and a case of Châteaux de Châteaux. Well – if that was the case – that was corporate hospitality well spent, it’s tax deductible you know!
But to bring us up to date, he’s just given The Telegraph an intervew pointing the finger at ‘the man in the street’ who pays for services such as building and plumbing (a HMRC bête noire) with cash. He said, “Tax provides the funding to run the country: hospitals, schools and everything else. Every time someone pays cash in order not to pay VAT, the nation gets diddled.”
My old flatmate used to say, when you point your finger at somebody else you are pointing three at yourself.
