Ministers claim expenses to reduce their tax bills
While there's nothing wrong with taking professional advice regarding your taxation affairs, many MPs in the House of Commons have taken advice, and charged this to the taxpayer, in relation to reducing their tax liabilities within the rules and regulations. So in effect taxpayers are paying MPs advisers to reduce the income for taxpayers themselves!
This is the bizarre situation we are in regarding UK MPs expenses and although the situation appears to have died down over the last few days there are rumours of more damning revelations. While David Cameron appears to have caught the mood of the electorate perfectly there is a concern that all main parties will suffer in the forthcoming European elections with minority parties now looking to take advantage of the situation.
When you consider that the MPs expenses system has been in place for upwards of 20 years we can only imagine how much money has been spent by MPs over the years. It was only a few years ago it was revealed that various receipts relating to senior government ministers were destroyed in error with no backup data available. The situation appears to have got out of hand over the last few years with many MPs believing their expense claims would never be made public.
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