Tax Efficiency

It is hard not to feel a little sympathy for Jimmy Carr, caught using a dubious tax efficiency scheme - having himself used low tax paying corporate as part of his comedy routine. Giving us a sense he was "one of us", when in fact he was at the same game.

But the lesson learned here is to simplify the tax system, the simpler it is the less loop holes you will have to close! It was wrong of Cameron to name him directly, as he has found out many of his conservative party donors are doing similar or worse - and in the interest of fairness they should be named too.

Likening tax to a moral issue is highly dubious though, the real annoyance here is the rich being able to use mechanisms that are never available to the ordinary person - who ends up footing most of the tax bill.