CAMERON'S CASABLANCA MOMENT...

PM David Cameron

I'm shocked, shocked to find that tax evasion is going on in here!

News that Barclays Bank has been ordered by the Treasury to pay half-a-billion pounds in tax it tried to avoid paying will be welcomed by many of us. The bank was accused by HM Revenue and Customs of designing and using two schemes that were intended to avoid substantial amounts of tax. The Con Dem Government has taken the unusual step of rapidly introducing retrospective legislation to end such "aggressive tax avoidance" by financial institutions. Apparently the authorities were alerted to the loopholes in the law by Barclays itself. The bank, which has not been named officially by the government, but named by the Daily Telegraph and the BBC) is the target of HMRC's crackdown. The Con Dem Government has closed the schemes to retrieve £500m of lost tax and safeguard payments of billions of more tax in the future. The Daily Telegraph understands that other major banks also tried to use the same schemes to avoid paying a total of £500m in tax. While its makes a pleasant change, I don’t think that this is an attempt to ensure that we are all in it together, merely a consequence of some pretty blatant and in your face tax evasion that even the Con Dems could not ignore it...