PRESS RELEASE: Questions to answer over Osborne’s dodgy dossier

This press release was issued today, following our post yesterday on the HMRC's publication on the 50p tax rate.

PRESS NOTICE:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Questions need to be answered over Osborne’s Budget Day dodgy dossier

LEAP has raised several serious questions about the dossier used by Chancellor George Osborne to justify cutting the 50% tax rate at the Budget last week. The dossier, published by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) ‘The Exchequer effect of the 50 per cent additional rate of income tax’ was published on Budget Day, and makes the case for the 50% tax rate to be scrapped and replaced with the 45% rate.

Today (26 March) is the last day of the post-Budget debate, culminating in a vote on the Budget. LEAP Chair John McDonnell will be raising this issue in Parliament, which has led to a tax cut for the highest 1% of earners at a time of austerity.

LEAP’s analysis raises questions about a numbers of issues, including: political interference in drafting the dossier; the efforts made by HMRC in maximising compliance with the 50% rate; and why HMRC based its assumptions on different Taxable Income Elasticity measures in 2009 when the tax was announced.

John McDonnell MP, LEAP Chair, said:

"There are serious questions to be answered by George Osborne about the political impartiality of this document, in light of the analysis by LEAP – which raises massive doubts about the conclusion that the 50% rate will raise only an additional £100m.

"I will be raising this issue in Parliament because it is of deep significance to the both the justice of our taxation system, and to the integrity of the civil service."

Andrew Fisher, LEAP Director, said:

"This dodgy dossier is deeply flawed in its analysis of the tax avoidance associated with the 50p rate. Its politically convenient and economically dubious conclusions seem more like the work of political placemen than politically neutral civil servants. There are several questions that need to be answered if taxpayers are to have any faith in the tax system.

"Osborne claimed that the 50% tax was bad for Britain’s competitiveness, yet in the Budget debate he justified cutting it by claiming other measures would raise five times as much from the same group. The Chancellor is spinning both ways, but we need to get to the truth."

-Ends-

The LEAP analysis can be read in below on the blog