David Cameron's focus this week on tackling "welfare cheats" has underlined his priorities. The coalition is committed to an ideological programme of spending cuts worth £83bn by the end of this parliament – 60% more than planned by the Labour government. But, as the Guardian reported, there is just £1.5bn in benefit and tax credit fraud – the rest is due to system failure. Compare this with the £17bn on tax avoidance, evasion and non-payment identified in HMRC's Protecting Tax Revenues report and you get a sense of whether we're really "all in this together".
Tax avoidance is not a crime, but it is certainly a poor qualification for taking on a new role as head of an "external efficiency review". In 2006, using figures calculated by campaigning accountant Richard Murphy, the BBC's Money Programme reported that Philip Green and his family had saved themselves nearly £300m the previous year living partly in Monaco, where residents do not have to pay income tax.
Asked this morning on the Today programme, Green would only say "My wife's not a tax exile. My family do not live in the United Kingdom; it's somewhat different." He went on to claim, "We do pay all our tax in Britain. I think we have paid, over the last five years, some £300m-£400m in taxes on profits that have been made on our company." One would hope so. Operating profits on his Arcadia Group Limited firm were £266.2m in 2009, £275.3m in 2008, and £293.3m in 2007. Meanwhile, the Sunday Times Rich List puts Sir Philip and Lady Green in the top 10 with an estimated fortune of £4.1bn.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/13/philip-green-eficiency-savings
