TAXING YOUR INCREDULITY

A study by HM Revenue and customs found that the extremely rich are using avoidance schemes to reduce their income tax rate to an average of 10 per cent - less than half the level paid by the average Briton. The Chancellor personally studied the "anonymised" copies of the tax returns submitted by some of the country's wealthiest citizens which showed some people are able to avoid paying income tax entirely. "Mr Osborne told The Daily Telegraph: "I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right. "I'm talking about people right at the top. I'm talking about people with incomes of many millions of pounds a year." (Daily Telegraph, 10 April) For a Chancellor of the Exchequer to be "shocked" and "don't think that's right" is indeed incredible. Millionaires protecting their property is the very basis of capitalism. RD