If you think about it, there’s no real incentive for the current Government to hang on for another year anyway now all this has come out. They were only doing so to get a bit more troughing in before their inevitable demise, and now the troughing party is over, I’m sure that they’d like to get stuck into building their new careers as soon as possible.

Nick

if an expense is not wholly & essential for your business, it’s taxable. Going back how many years john?

GPs are, in fact, mostly independent contractors to the NHS (even though they get NHS pensions). Their contracts are not subject to price competition, nor renewal. Don’t you wish your company could get this type of contract?

My GP isn’t much good but she gets my money anyway. On the rare occasions I need help, I go to the small injuries unit (good nurse practitioners there).

Reply: An MP’s job is designed around the principle of two jobs, to allow MPs to be Ministers, Whips etc as well.

bloated, easily corrupt, and even more entrenched in a bigger bubble, the US political system is so far removed from its voters it requires a massive polling lobby and endless streams of hangers on who represent corp interests and not much else.

yes our system needs an overhaul, but not in a million years like the ‘democracy’ accross the pond thanks

She may have been operating within the rules, but you don’t need a GCSE in common sense to see that a stay over arrangement with her sister, a house in which she has no equity, cannot be classed as her main residence and the constituency home that she shares with her husband and children and in which she has an equity stake is not her main residence, is absurd.

What a terrible example for a senior minister to give. Maybe she thinks that her wafer thin majority will melt away and she should build some capital.

A few years ago I had a small flat in Chelsea Harbour I was working most of the week in London and returned to my home in Northumberland, where my wife and kids were, at weekends.

I owned the equity in both houses, but when the time came to sell the London flat (It had a higher value than the Northumberland property) the revenue would not wear the notion that the London property was my main residence, consequently I took a 40% hit on the capital gain. Now this was a significant sum to me a former council estate lad.

Where is the justice here?

Do you operate under the same law as the rest of us when it comes to taxation, or do you have privileges that we don’t?

If its the same law, I look forward to your support making similar expense claims.

If there are laws just for you, we will draw the obvious conclusion about the HoC

Nick

Thank you for your reply. Of course it’s reasonable for you to employ an assistant and, of course, your assistant will pay his own tax – I wasn’t referring to this.

What I was referring to was, for example, MPs effectively claiming £20k+ for the use of a bedroom in a family members home. HMRC wouldn’t allow me to claim this was my main residence and then to charge for my mortgage payments on my ‘second’ (i.e. real) home as expenses. There’s no way they’d accept this. How come they allow MPs to?

Surely the whole problem would disappear if HMRC treated MPs like the rest of us.

Sorry about the Questions, but I am not aware as to the structure of Salaries, payments, allowances, expenses etc in Parliament.

At the moment it all sounds very confusing and inefficient to a simple businessman

Reply: No, an MP can only claim for expenses incurred, and cannot make a profit on it. Any staff employed by the MP are given civil service styke Parliamentary contracts and paid centrally, yet MPs still have to report this as if it were some part of their package.