Dave Hartnett continues to do the rounds, as he tries to encourage people to declare offshore holdings. In a recent interview with The Telegraph he is quoted:
"My hunch, it is only a hunch, is that a disproportionately large number of your readers will be relatively wealthy, will have hidden some money offshore, and some of them are going to end up in tears because they are just not going to have thought we would be as tough as we’re going to be."
Am I wrong, or is Hartnett beginning to sound a little like Denis Healey (re his speech from the late 70's boasting about "howls of anguish")?
All very well, if Hartnett were a poltician with a political axe to grind. However, he is a civil servant and is not meant to politicise his role. In fact he almost sounds as though he would relish making the middle classes cry.
What does "relatively wealthy" actually mean?
Quite why he has a sudden desire to tear into alleged middle class tax evaders, whilst the "super rich" are able to cut private deals with HMRC seems a tad hypocritical.
The fact is HMRC do not have the resources to hunt down and investigate the alleged hundreds of thousands of middle class tax evaders, that they would have people believe exist.
This is a smoke and mirrors exercise pushed by the dying Labour administration to cover up their mismanagement of the economy and chaotic mismanagement of the merger of Customs and the Inland Revenue, by trying to make people blame the economic meltdown and government bankruptcy on the alleged hundreds and thousands of "tax evaders" who have squirrelled away billions offshore.
Those who have "squirrelled away" significant amounts of money are doubtless wealthy enough to have given up living in the UK long ago, and placed themselves out of reach of Hartnett.
This media campaign is a futile arse covering exercise.
Tax does have to be taxing.
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Dave should be looking closer to home at some of his HMRC managers who earn a hefty sum and who cant be fucking arsed to sort out the mess. Sitting tight until they retire, a culture of bullying, junior staff micro managed, collapse of morale.
ReplyDeleteDave obviously didn't come down very hard on his mate Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, when he personally intervened to stop an HMRC enquiry into his "non dom" status which enables him to live tax free in the UK. In return for this favour, his newspaper publishes made up stories about HMRC staff going on taxpayer funded shopping trips which are in fact taken on annual leave and paid for out of wages.
ReplyDelete"My hunch... they are just not going to have thought we would be as tough as we’re going to be."...
ReplyDelete...Oh yeah, Davie Boy, you and whose f***ing army?!!!
If this NDO crusade is gonna succeed for god's sake don't let any of HMRC's senior managers have anything to do with it or else it will be an unmitigated disaster. You need look no further than the "merger" of IR and C&E to see for yourself HMRC's miserable track record. For a start, the "merger" is a misnomer. It was in point of fact a toxic takeover. We now have a department run almost exclusively by ex-IR managers/dictators who haven't got the first clue about reality. These idiotic wastes of space sit in their comfy ivory towers and dish out so many orders and tying their subordinates in knots with reams of pointless red tape, spreadsheets, stats and performance league tables that we have virtually lost the will to live. Aye Capt Mainwaring... we are all doooooooomed!!!
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