Ok, the budget is today. It’s time to take pre-emptive action to protect your finances. Yesterday I took the massive step of moving all my assets offshore. I opened an account on Canvey Island and transferred all my worldly goods there, to protect them from that grabby woman who is out to persecute me. Then I transferred my business to a really nice Nigerian guy who apparently knew my father and is related to the King of Tanzania, after he’d emailed me to suggest robbing his government of $42million, to protect it from the chancellor’s avarice. And he’s really efficient. Within 10 minutes he must have transferred all the cash in the accounts to our new, African ones, because all my UK accounts are fabulously empty. Thus free from any new taxation that our government may demand. He’s emailing me the new bank details next week. Or the following.

Yet I trust the system. The British system. “You will never pay tax twice”, they state, categorically. If money is taxed, like from income, then it can’t be taxed again. Except vat, obviously. But that’s only 20% more tax after the 30, 40 or 45% you’ve already paid. Oh, and IHT. InHeritance Tax. The way they can still tax dead people. Who’ve paid tax all their lives to build up a little ‘nest egg’, which the government takes half of because… errr… because they fucking can. And they will. You can’t take it with you, can you???? And no-one said tax has to have moral considerations.

The problem is: we need tax. It has to come from somewhere. Or the country grinds to a halt and ends up with a ‘black hole’, real or imaginary. The difference between the parties is how they tax. Because over 14 years of the Tories we had rising taxes every year, but they did it in really sneaky ways. Like choosing not to raise the tax threshold at which you start paying tax. Freezing it. Which produces a year on year rise in income tax, without telling us.

And every form of tax has an impact, on a micro and macro scale. If it was up to me, you’d pay all the tax and I’d be exempt. Maybe pay a bit of vat on new shoes. But the reality is, if you tax businesses, they will employ less people. If you increase stamp duty, people buy less houses. If you increase IHT, less people will die. So the ‘expected yield’ from tax increases will always fall short.

At least I’m safe now all my money is offshore. So go on Rachel: do your worst!!!

Happy Budget Wednesday

A xxxx