The corpse of David Laws's political career is still warm in its grave, yet The Telegraph is already gunning for Danny Alexander over the alleged flipping of his second home.  But that's not the bit of the story that interests me.  I choked on this section:

The new Treasury minister also claimed more than £1,800 from his office allowances to pay a firm of chartered accountants for financial advice. One invoice specified that the firm advised him on tax and prepared his personal self assessment form.

Now, I accept that accountancy and tax advice are legitimate business expenses.  It's totally acceptable that an entrepreneur should be able to pay for them out of the business and claim them as allowable expenses for tax purposes.  What sticks in my craw is the idea that the taxpayer should somehow pay the full whack for them.

The entrepreneur still bears the cost of accountancy and tax advice.  If the tax code gets particularly complicated and the accountant's fees go up, the entrepreneur must find extra money to pay the higher bill.  It's the entrepreneur who must forego other expenses if money gets tight, or must work harder to find new sources of business to fund these and other business expenses.  As members of society, our participation is merely the tax foregone by tolerating them as legitimate business expenses.

Compare that to our MPs.  They are responsible for overseeing legislation, including the annual Finance Act process.  It's their fault that the tax code is so complicated in the first place - they worked on the committees that scrutinised the Finance Bill and they voted on it in Parliament.  So if they find the tax laws hard to deal with they have only themselves to blame.

As a result, if they do feel they need advice, they need to find the money to pay for it themselves out of their salaries.  Like other salaried mortals, accountancy and tax services are ordinarily paid for out of post-tax income. We don't get to deduct tax advice pre-tax.

And neither should they.  Let's hope Danny Alexander, should he have to refund any house-flipping profits, also refunds the taxpayer for his personal tax advice.

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Filed under: Current issues, Politics, Taxation with tags danny alexander, david laws, mps' expenses, sleaze, tax agents, telegraph