Austin Mitchell’s tax rate is lower than that of the Prince of Wales
AUSTIN Mitchell’s Tax Rate Is Lower Than That Of The Prince Of Wales….
A fact which makes his comments in the Commons yesterday really rather interesting.
Mitchell announced that the Prince of Wales pays tax at a lower rate than the poor do. He reached this conclusion by doing something fairly interesting:
Austin Mitchell said that the Prince’s accounts show that he paid less direct and indirect taxes as a percentage of income that the “bottom quartile of households” in Britain.
His proof?
Mr Mitchell, the MP for Grimsby, said that figures show that the Prince’s “tax plus indirect tax is 24 per cent of his income for 2012 and 23.6 per cent for 2013”.
He added: “The bottom quartile of households pay direct and indirect taxes as a percentage of income of 38 per cent and the top quartile pay 33.7 per cent.”
He’s reached these figures by looking at the Prince’s gross income and then calculated the taxes paid. But the Prince is a business and as a business he has expenses. So it would be better to look at tax paid out of net income: that is, tax after we’ve deducted those business expenses.
But OK, let’s not do that: but let’s look at Austin Mitchell MP’s tax rate if we calculate it on the same basis as he is calculating the Prince’s.
Mitchell’s income is his £66,000 MP’s salary plus the expenses he gets paid. £36,000 in 2001/12. £112,000 in total then. But he only gets charged tax on that salary, his income after his business expenses. And that’s in the top quarter of households, so it’s that 33.7% that he himself quotes, or £22,000 or so a year.
Ah, but, £22,000 a year out of a gross income of £112,000 is, umm, 19.5%. Lower than that of the Prince of Wales.
Mitchell’s tax calculation isn’t looking so clever now, is it?
Posted: 18th, July 2013 | In: Money, Politicians, Royal Family Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
