One rule for who?

You have to be annoyed, or at least amused, at the sheer hypocrisy of our Lords and Masters in Whitehall.

Firstly we have HMRC advising employees of the BBC to convert to using their own freelance companies so they can avoid paying taxes. Minor details like IR35 don’t seem to have entered their thinking. Nor, incidentally, does any of the BBC’s own guidance on this subject make any mention of it. On the other hand, they fired a lot of people a while back, almost all of who are now working for the BBC in their old jobs but as freelancers. Ho hum…

Then we get the expenses row. Don’t know about you, but I would dearly love to have a taxpayer funded mortgage to cover me working away from home. And have it last for more than two years. And be paid to furnish and maintain that property. And keep the profits, free of CGT, when I no longer need it.  Or even rent it to a colleague, who also gets that money reimbursed. But then I’m only a mere worker, not an MP.

Now we hear the poor dears are up in arms about being told to repay some (not all, note) expenses that have been found to be outside the rules. Or, at least, outside an interpretation of the rules that to you and me seems eminently sensible. “No”, they cry, “We were misled!We were following guidance! Befehl ist befehl!”.

Some have paid up without overt protest. Our Great Leader is one, having handed over £12,000 in excess cleaning and gardening costs. Must have some bloody good cleaners and gardeners working for him, is all I can say. And I wish I had a spare twelve grand in my back pocket anyway.

At the heart of their current bleating is that the rules have been changed retrospectively. Well there are quite a few people who have good reason to be annoyed about that.  They’re the ones who have been stitched up by a ruling usually called BN66, that is seeking to re-tax them,  with interest and possibly penalties, for income going back years since what was previously permissible no longer is. Excuse me?

Roll on next year. We hopefully get a change in government. Even if we don’t, many MPs who apparently can’t live without taking the mickey out of taxpayer funded expenses will have stood down. Good riddance, says I.  Hopefully their replacements will understand the concept of one rule for all and, not the Orwellian variant we have right now.

We can but live in hope…