It's been a fascinating day. I've spoken to many journalists (not in itself now a cause for fascination) but what is clear is that many of them think Osborne's claim to be amazed by the scale of tax avoidance is just (how shall we put this?) plain daft.
No one in their right minds thought tax avoidance a minor issue.
No one who thought about it for long thought tax avoidance could be as low as HMRC claimed.
No one certainly believed that tax avoidance could be only £1.5 billion a year by individuals when oddly the Revenue could find £6 billion of it to suddenly justify cutting the 50p tax rate.
And no one, not anyone, believed George Osborne was surprised by tax avoidance on the tax returns of very high net worth individuals. They thought they might have been stupid to claim he was. They might even think that if was surprised he had not done the basic research that made him fit to do the job. But they weren't surprised by that either.
So what is needed now? The obvious answer is action. And Osborne has set himself up now as a man who must deliver it - after all, his shocked reaction demands it.
But no one will be surprised if he does not.
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He’s been Chancellor now for nearly two years and is now shocked
What has he been doing with his time?
Holding Cameron’s hand
The argument it was all down to Labour is also wearing thin now
Labour however could have done more when in power to prevent this situation. Although I accept that the tories are the tax avoiders’ best friends.
Sure I’m not the only one who was instantly transported to Casablanca where Captain Renault is shocked! Shocked! to find out that gambling is going on – and interrupted only by the waiter handing him his winnings.
Round up the usual suspects….
The politics of this are quite interesting given that there are probably not a few Tory voters who are just ordinary employees who are stuck on PAYE with little in the way of opportunities to engage in tax avoidance and evasion, who might eventually realise that they are being asked to pay more so as to fund the tax dodging habits of the real backers of the Tories. I’m sure that most Tory Cabinet Ministers have their income put into trusts/dependents names that go no where near their tax returns – so please lets not be fooled by that little ruse.