.png)
.png)
In recent weeks a flurry of politicians have published information about their tax affairs. The prime minister, leader of the opposition and first minister of Scotland have all put details into the public domain. The transparency here is notable, though I suspect that the motivation is in part to force their opponents to publish their own details and hope that something unsavoury is revealed.
At the moment people are not releasing full returns, just summary information. Contrast this with the US where, since the days of Richard Nixon, it has become customary for presidents to publish their returns in full, even though there is no legal requirement to do so. The glaring exception is Donald Trump whose tax returns were released by a congressional committee after he refused to release them voluntarily.
Trump apart, what I find interesting is that presidents have released full tax returns rather than the summaries we have seen to date in the UK. They are all available online (tinyurl.com/uspresidenttrs) including some historic returns that archivists have released. It is fascinating, for example, to see the handwritten notes on FDR’s 1913 return. Unless you are an expert in US tax returns (and I certainly am not) it is difficult to make much sense of some of these documents and, ironically, the summaries released in the UK give a much clearer view of somebody’s tax affairs.
If anybody is reading this column 50 years from now I suspect they will be amazed that there was once a time when senior UK politicians didn’t release their full tax returns as a matter of course. Put a note in your diary now to check.
If you do one thing...
See the latest table of HMRC interest rates – tinyurl.com/hmrcintrates.
