Finance Bill

Debate between Shabana Mahmood and Frank Dobson

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that the very well paid people who got the benefit are a collection of tax swindlers swindling the rest of the taxpayers, and should not everybody in the House be attending to changing the law so that such tax swindling cannot happen in the future?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I was about to come to the topic of tax avoidance, which I hope will answer his question.

Another weakness in the Government’s argument is the proposition that behavioural change, or tax avoidance, means it is not worth while maintaining the rate at 50p. This must be the only example of tax avoidance resulting in a huge tax cut, rather than in Government crackdowns to tackle and fight tax avoidance, which they are normally so quick to say they are doing. The Chancellor is on record as saying that he considers tax avoidance to be “morally repugnant”, but in the case of the 50p rate he rewarded a particular form of avoidance with a tax cut. I wonder if that has ever happened for people on middle and lower incomes. I think not.

The message that this Government have sent out is that if people are sufficiently well off to pay for advisers who can tell them how to avoid paying the 50p rate, and are organised enough and can lobby the Government, they are up for a tax cut, but everyone else, sorry, is simply worse off.