I woke rather earlier
than I needed to. Trying not to wake my little dog (who was asleep
on top of me) I got up and went downstairs for morning
ablutions. Over brekkie I watched last night's episode of "Dad's
Army" in which the Verger was being beastly in the vicar's
bedroom. They don't write them like that any more. Which is
probably for the best.
Just as I was setting off
for work "er indoors TM" got up.
She was rather scathing about my inability to find her geocache
yesterday. Apparently she went out and checked up on it after I
logged my failure, and shortly after that someone else logged that
they had found it.. She showed me a photo of where I should have
been. It didn't look familiar - the photo wasn't where I'd been. I
think I got my geo-sums wrong. Woops.
I scraped the ice from
the car and set off to work. As I drove the pundits on the radio were
all a-twitter because the Prime Minister has made his tax affairs
public. Since it had been revealed that not only was his father on
the fiddle but the P.M himself had (allegedly) benefitted from
his father's dealings he felt he had to do something to try to prove
he hadn't got his hand in the till.
There is now uproar
because his mother has recently given
him a present of hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash. My
first reaction was "so what?"; those with spare
hundreds of thousands of pounds can do whatever they like with it.
(Much as I'd like some of it)
But the pundits were
asking if this was some sort of tax avoidance.
It transpires that if
anyone's mum gives them a bung (*and* then lives for another seven
years) then that's all very nice. That money is a present; the
tax man doesn't get anything in inheritance
tax.
(Inheritance tax being
forty per cent of what you inherit -over a certain threshold)
But if anyone's mum
croaks and leaves them money in her will then that money is fair game
for inheritance tax.
I didn't know that subtle
distinction. I'd never have thought of that. Which probably explains
why I don't have any spare hundreds of thousands of pounds laying
about.
This has given me some
rather mercenary thoughts. My parents are both having major surgery
in the near future. They wouldn't be having joint replacements and
heart bypasses if the surgeons thought their numbers were up.
Obviously they have a few years left in them. Perhaps I could
convince them to make over their goods and chattels now so's I (and
my brother) don't have to pay any inheritance tax.
Perhaps I might persuade
them to work out what they are worth....
However I don't want to.
It's not a nice thing to do, is it?
I then spent much of the
long shift at work wondering if perhaps that's why I'm scraping a
living working on a Sunday when everyone else is out and about;
whilst other people are Conservative Prime Ministers being lambasted
in the national press for their apparent greed at seemingly having
done the tax man out of eighty thousand pounds.
Much as it pains me to
admit, I always thought he was one of our better Prime Ministers up
till now...
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