As this week’s edition went to press, the eight surviving Conservative Party leadership candidates continued to focus on tax and spending priorities, with former chancellor, Rishi Sunak, seemingly alone in ruling out tax cuts until public finances improve. A number of contenders suggest further savings from government departmental budgets (which would presumably mean civil service redundancies) to fund tax cuts including: abandoning the rise in corporation tax from April 2023, reductions in the basic rate of income tax, and removing VAT from energy bills (see page 7 for details).
Current chancellor, and leadership candidate, Nadhim Zahawi has recently attracted attention in the press for different reasons. Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates asks whether Zahawi used an offshore trust to avoid a large CGT bill when shares in YouGov were sold in 2017. As the Financial Times reports (10 July 2022), the allegations surround a Gibraltar company which had a £20m stake in YouGov and which was owned by Mr Zahawi’s father who lived abroad.
Responding to reports that HMRC is investigating his tax affairs, Mr Zahawi said: ‘I’ve always declared my taxes. I paid my taxes in the UK. I will answer any questions HMRC has of me … If I am prime minister, I think the right thing to do is to publish my accounts annually.’
As this week’s edition went to press, the eight surviving Conservative Party leadership candidates continued to focus on tax and spending priorities, with former chancellor, Rishi Sunak, seemingly alone in ruling out tax cuts until public finances improve. A number of contenders suggest further savings from government departmental budgets (which would presumably mean civil service redundancies) to fund tax cuts including: abandoning the rise in corporation tax from April 2023, reductions in the basic rate of income tax, and removing VAT from energy bills (see page 7 for details).
Current chancellor, and leadership candidate, Nadhim Zahawi has recently attracted attention in the press for different reasons. Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates asks whether Zahawi used an offshore trust to avoid a large CGT bill when shares in YouGov were sold in 2017. As the Financial Times reports (10 July 2022), the allegations surround a Gibraltar company which had a £20m stake in YouGov and which was owned by Mr Zahawi’s father who lived abroad.
Responding to reports that HMRC is investigating his tax affairs, Mr Zahawi said: ‘I’ve always declared my taxes. I paid my taxes in the UK. I will answer any questions HMRC has of me … If I am prime minister, I think the right thing to do is to publish my accounts annually.’
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