Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Obscene oligarchy...


Time to dust off the 'Le rasoir national', the 'capital' device invented by Dr Joseph Ignance Guillotin: he suggested this beheading device with the intent of creating a socially equal form of capital punishment; they don't deserve the honour but it sounds just the job for swollen headed pretentious nonentities with a penchant for sapping and clawing their unearned wealth from the worn and blistered hands of toiling, hard-done-by, persecuted Euro taxpayers. No, not the casino bankers but Eurocrats! Last week saw the judgement (EUR-Lex) from proceedings that started towards the end of 2010:  Michel Bourges-Maunoury and Marie-Louise Heintz (married and retired Eurocrats) went to Court of Justice to avoid tax; the operative part of the ruling is "On those grounds, the Court (Third Chamber) hereby rules:
The second paragraph of Article 13 of the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities, initially annexed to the Treaty establishing a single Council and a single Commission of the European Communities, and subsequently, under the Amsterdam Treaty, to the EC Treaty must be interpreted as meaning that it precludes national legislation such as that at issue in the main proceedings which takes account of the income, including the pensions and allowances on termination of service, paid by the European Union to its officials and other staff, or to its former officials and former staff, in calculating the cap on a tax such as the wealth tax."
Or, as the Express put it: "income paid by the EU and subject to EU tax could not be taxed 'either directly or indirectly by a member state'. It also ruled that recipients were exempt from declaring the amount to national tax authorities." We have our own oligarchic shysters in the form of the Kinnocks (and others) whose MONTHLY combined pension is 33% higher than the ANNUAL income of most single pensioners.
"Recent research showed that European taxpayers are now spending £1billion a year on pensions for retired officials."

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