George Osborne once advised people to use “clever financial products” that could have helped them reduce care costs and inheritance tax, a video from 2003 shows.
The re-emergence of the footage will be embarrassing for the chancellor as it comes amid controversy about the government’s lack of prosecutions of tax evaders who had accounts at HSBC in Switzerland.
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“The one piece of advice I would give to Bill [a viewer] is that there are some pretty clever financial products that enable you in effect to pass on your home, or the value of your home, to your son or daughter and then get personal care paid for by the state,” Osborne said.
He adds: “I probably shouldn’t be advocating this on television.”
And then we wonder why the UK has a revenue problem... Perhaps if its government cracked down on tax cheats rather than advocating for them, it might be able to balance its books.