The chancellor George Osborne has spent over £43,000 of taxpayers' money defending bankers' bonuses, according to new figures.
The bonus cap restricts bankers’ bonuses to 100 per cent of their pay, or 200 per cent with shareholder approval
The chancellor George Osborne has spent over £43,000 of taxpayers’ money defending bankers’ bonuses, according to new figures.
A response from the Treasury to a Freedom of Information request by Labour shadow financial secretary to the Treasury Cathy Jamieson has revealed that the total cost of external legal fees relating to the legal challenge to the bankers’ bonus cap and connected advice is £43,064.
But the true cost to the taxpayer is likely to be even higher as the figures are only for the external legal costs of the challenge and do not include the cost of civil servants who worked on the case.
The bonus cap restricts bankers’ bonuses to 100 per cent of their pay, or 200 per cent with shareholder approval.
George Osborne lodged a legal challenge with the European Court of Justice on the bonus cap in September 2013 but the move was abandoned in November 2014 when Osborne said it was “unlikely to succeed”.
Commenting on the news, Cathy Jamieson MP said:
“While working families face a cost-of-living crisis, it is astounding that George Osborne chose to waste taxpayers’ money fighting a bank bonus cap.
“His decision revealed his true priorities and showed just how out of touch he is.
“It shouldn’t have taken the EU to act to rein in excessive bonuses, but George Osborne has totally failed to act here in Britain.
“Labour will reform the banks and levy a tax on bank bonuses to fund a paid starter job for young people out of work for over a year.”
19 Responses to “George Osborne spends £43,000 of taxpayers’ money defending bankers’ bonuses”
Guest
Ah yes, your 1%’s “comparative advantage” over the 99%.
Brendan Caffrey
Taxing Wealth: A
Modest Proposal
The fear of a “tax bombshell” in newspapers before
next May inhibits any political party from open discussion. But an innovative
reform of taxation might get popular support; even for some tax increases.
Recent support for a radical change, involving a shift
from taxing income to taxing wealth, has emerged. The first outing was called a
“mansion tax”. This was a tax on large private houses. One objection to this
was that it left the council tax bands on property unchanged since 1991. This
means that the large recent increases in the value of housing have produced a
situation where all houses valued at above £320.000 are taxed at the same rate.
So house worth millions of pounds are taxed as if they were valued at £320.000.
A simple solution is to increase tax rates in new
bands up to say £5 million. In France a rate of 75% has just been abolished
because it raised less tax than expected; and chasing tax avoiders fleeing to
other countries increases the cost of tax collection. This punitive rate would
also be very unpopular in Britain.
An alternative would be a tax on all capital assets.
This is a tax on wealth in all its forms, large holdings of capital in banks,
hedge funds, capital transfers gifts and inheritances. This would take much of
the responsibility away from income tax, for raising state revenues. Income tax
could be reduced overall. But a more complex set of bands could be introduced
that did not have equal sizes. So, at the bottom there could be the greatest
relief. At the middle there would be less relief than at the bottom. Above the
middle relief could be reduced but by smaller amounts the further one rises to
say the French maximum of 75%. This 75% would only apply to very few extremely
rich people. As the numbers here are so small the cost of chasing non payers of
tax would be small compared with France.
On this system the poor would pay much less, the
“squeezed middle” would pay a little less, and the very rich much more. This
could be popular, even to many voters.
There would be still residual problems chasing the
movements of liquid cash. But many forms of investment have time limits, and
are less easy to move out of the country.
sarntcrip
IF TORY BOSSES DID NOT IMPORT CHEAP LABOUR TO BOOST THEIR PROFITS THERE WOULD BE VIRTUALLY NO PROBLEM OOPS SORRY HIT CAPSLOCK
Norfolk29
How naive you are. George is one of them and when he leaves politics he will join them. On the board of some financial institute or other.