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Here are the answers to last month’s tax quote puzzler
“Morally wrong.”
David Cameron, about Jimmy Carr’s tax avoidance
“If they don’t pay tax, we’ll reclaim their assets and give them to the people that work there.”
Russell Brand in his book Revolution
“We know that we need to do more to meet our targets and deliver an acceptable level of service.”
Lin Homer, about HMRC
“I think that you do evil.”
Margaret Hodge, to Google
“It’s just a commonsense reform, which in the end will help house more people.”
Grant Shapps, about the bedroom tax
“We stay the course.”
George Osborne, in the 2014 autumn statement
“How can it be fair to hit working people with a £3bn cut to their tax credits when he’s spent £3bn giving a tax cut to people earning over £150,000?”
Ed Balls, in response to George Osborne and his 2014 autumn statement
“The little grannies.”
Myleene Klass, about Labour’s proposed mansion tax
“I would say that [a tax cut] would happen over my dead body.”
Danny Alexander, in response to Boris Johnson
“I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes.”
Harriet Harman, about the public transport system
“While the vast majority of wealthy people pay their taxes, there is still a small minority who do not.
George Osborne, in his 2014 Budget speech
“As a way of encouraging the economy to grow it’s pretty much useless.”
Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones, about Wales’ economy
“A ‘maso-sadist’.”
Ed Balls, about David Cameron
“How did Ed Balls ever bag Yvette?”
Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, who is married to Michael Gove
“Apparently, when he told the prime minister that he wanted to cut taxes for bingo, the prime minister thought he was referring to…”
Ed Balls, about David Cameron and his “old school chum”
“We have found making a profit in the UK difficult and therefore have not been in a position to pay much corporation tax.”
Starbucks MD Kris Engskov
“You then order your goods and you get them delivered by the Royal Mail in parcels stamped with the Queen’s head, and they then pretend it’s nothing to do with business in the UK.”
Margaret Hodge, to Amazon
“The senior management of HMRC is only dedicated to reducing its staff number, and not to collecting tax.”
Richard Murphy, discussing the tax gap
“They are the 43,000 affluent people who knowingly signed up to an avoidance scheme in full awareness they were using artificial arrangements to reduce their tax bill. I have no sympathy for
these people.”
HMRC’s Jim Harra
“I want to apologise to anyone who was offended by the tax stories earlier this year … With a new team of accountants, we are working to settle things with all parties involved ASAP.”
Gary Barlow, Take That
“We are a tiny little country, we don’t have scale, and our version of scale is to be innovative and to be clever, and tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known.”
Bono, about Eire
“We will not tolerate aggressive tax avoidance and will take action to make sure people pay the taxes that are due.”
David Gauke, exchequer secretary to the Treasury
“We don’t have proposals for changing taxation. We certainly are not going to put ourselves at a tax disadvantage with the rest of the UK.”
Alex Salmond, about the Scottish people
“I try and keep it very simple – pay your tax, that’s it. I’ve been right in the end.”
Apprentice presenter Alan Sugar
“A ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ taxation policy, by which one country pursues tax policies at the expense of others, is just as dangerous as beggar-thy-neighbour monetary policies.”
German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble
