Tax avoidance is alright for me but not you!

Harris & Co Chartered Accountants Northampton reports Margaret Hodge the Labour MP who chairs the Public Accounts Committee recently said to a group of accountants that she was grilling:

"What depresses me is you could contribute so much to the public good and you chose to focus on reducing available resoucres for us to build schools, hospitals and infrastructure."

Mrs Hodge"s father founded Stemcor, the UK"s 6th largest private company. It is run by her brother and has annual sales of £2.1 billion. It paid just 0.01% of it sales in taxes last year.

Some would say that it seems that such a low tax bill has to be result of tax avoidance by her family business. However, it appears that the MP thinks that your family business should not take advice from people like us on reducing your tax bills.

A little bit of the pot calling the kettle black, me thinks!