You'd have thought - at least I would - that people working for our national broadcaster, an organisation that is funded largely, but not exclusively, by what is essentially a poll tax on television ownership and is therefore a publicly funded body (to the tune of £3Billion a year), would only employ people on the basis that they were on a PAYE (Pay As You Earn) tax basis?
So that employees of this public body would be subject to paying the same levels of taxation that most of the rest of us are subjected to? It is, after all, our money in the form of a 'no choice' tax that pays these people's often mega salaries. It is surely right that people who are effectively employed by this public corporation should play by the same rules as we do? After all you wouldn't expect pubic employees to be able to avoid tax when they are effectively paid by tax revenue. That would be madness, wouldn't it?
I don't mean sometime contractors, who are engaged on an 'as and when' basis and who have independent companies to run in a highly competitive marketplace and who may, therefore, enjoy some of the entrepreneurial tax breaks that encourage businesses in this country (and quite right too).
I'm talking about people like Jeremy Paxman, Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen, David Dimblebee, Fiona Bruce, Chris Evans, Terry Wigon, Richard Twat-Bacon?
Who do they work for? The BBC? Well no actually, they all work for their own companies which charge the BBC for their services and, as a result, they pay around 22% income tax rather than the PAYE level of 40% or 45% - and most of them would be on 45% given their level of income. Dimbledore gets £15k a show (BBCQT) and Alan Hansen is paid £1.4 million a year for an hour's work a week on MoTD.
None of them is on PAYE. All of them are avoiding tax and yet Messrs Paxman, Bacon, Bruce and others regularly cover stories, expressing outrage at tax avoidance by corporations.
They're taking the piss out of all of us.
Enough.
Thanks for reading.
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