No This Can't Be Right.

Surely there isn't a 07:50 on a Saturday (23/6/13). However as it appears there is and I'm here I should take a moment to cover Jimmy Carr's tax affairs in more detail.

Jimmy Carr is probably Britain's most successful comedian at the moment with a stand up act that sells out arenas and frequent TV presenting jobs including on Channel4's infamous "10 O'clock Live." At some point during this past week one of Britain's newspapers revealed that Mr Carr had been using a perfectly legal scheme to minimise the amount of income tax he has to pay. This drew comment from the Prime Minister David Cameron no less who described the situation as immoral. What appears to have happened is that Mr Carr was using the standard footballers blag. That is to say that he was diverting a portion of his income into a fund that gave out development loans thus taking it out of the tax system. Mr Carr then took out tax-exempt loans from the fund for exactly the amount of money that he put in. Those loans were interest free and never repaid.

Although I haven't looked at the exact details of the scheme or done a forensic analysis of Mr Carr's accounts I'm guessing that he still ended up paying more income tax then most people earn in a year. Therefore I don't have any problem with it. Not least because the next time I'm going round with the begging bowl because there's been an earthquake in Haiti or a famine in east Africa the tax saved means Mr Carr can afford to be first in the queue. After all while I think everyone should pay their way in society I'm not sure that is the same thing as just giving the government lots of money.

However if you are Greek and reading this I'm sorry to put the boot in but you do occasionally need to pay the government some money especially if you want the government to pay for things like pensions or subsidised education.