It was no real surprise that the official
guidance stating that if employers pay for Covid-19 tests for their staff, that
will be treated as a benefit in kind on which the employees will be required to
pay income tax. The surprise was that it got to the stage that it did before
being reversed. When I first read about the policy, I thought it must be a
spoof – fake news – but no, it was there, in black and white, in HMRC’s official
guidance. I know that not all ‘minor’ details of the implementation
of policy go before ministers for decision, but something like this will have
gone through several levels of review and discussion before being released, and
I can’t imagine a discussion amongst a group of civil servants which concluded
that raising a tax charge on employees in such circumstances did not require
ministerial sign off. Which means that it was most probably signed off by a
minister – was the individual concerned asleep on the job?
The same applies to the decisions to
reinstate parking charges for NHS staff and to make the £500 bonus
for Welsh care staff taxable. The first
has already been reversed but the second not yet, as far as I’m aware. The
public reaction to all of these decisions was entirely predictable, but the
government took them all, leading to wholly avoidable U-turns. Donald Trump
famously said
during his election campaign that he could stand in 5th Avenue in
New York and shoot someone and it wouldn’t affect his level of support. Perhaps
Johnson is just testing the theory here: with 60,000 dead as a result of his
handling of the pandemic, turning on the staff who’ve worked so hard to help
the sick ought to be political suicide but support for his party remains
inexplicably high. Just how bad does he have to get before it has an impact on
his core supporters?
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1 comment:
Many of Johnson's supporters thought that the Covid crisis was a good way of reducing the population and cutting pension costs. They didn't appear to realise that they too were at risk by letting an irrational buffoon and psychopathic sidekick loose to lead the UK's response. I reckon 2nd wave is inevitable with those two muppets at the top and a full set of dimwits reporting to them.
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