Thank you, Mr Carr!

Jimmy Carr doing what he does best ... 
certainly not his tax return!

Award-winning comedian Jimmy Carr made a statement on his Twitter account saying he "made a terrible error of judgement" and is no longer involved in the K2 tax shelter. Jimmy also confided that "people expect me to 'make light' of the situation, but I'm not going to in this statement". Whether he will make light of this issue in his 'usually-funny' act is another matter, and we at NMNB (usually pronounced 'num-nub') certainly hope he feels free to do so once this terribly-debilitating issue has blown over. He is, after all one of the UK's top (and highly-paid!) comedians.

Said Jimmy, "I met with a financial advisor and he said to me 'Do you want to pay less tax? It's totally legal'". Of course he said "Yes" ... who wouldn't! It appears his 'terrible error of judgement'  was that, as the Prime Minister said, it was "morally wrong" to legally avoid tax and was unfair to the people who pay to watch the comic perform that he was not paying taxes in the same way as they did.

"I think some of these schemes - and I think particularly of the Jimmy Carr scheme - I have had time to read about and I just think this is completely wrong", said David Cameron, the current Prime Minister.

"People work hard, they pay their taxes, they save up to go to one of his shows. They buy the tickets. He is taking the money from those tickets and he, as far as I can see, is putting all of that into some very dodgy tax avoiding schemes.That is wrong. There is nothing wrong with people planning their tax affairs to invest in their pension and plan for their retirement - that sort of tax management is fine.

"But some of these schemes we have seen are quite frankly morally wrong. The government is acting by looking at a general anti-avoidance law but we do need to make progress on this.

"It is not fair on hard working people who do the right thing and pay their taxes to see these sorts of scams taking place."

The good news, though is that Jimmy Carr is no longer involved in this tax avoidance scheme and will hopefully from now on pay his fair share of tax just like the rest of us. With an extra £million or so in the economy that certainly is good news.

Good for you, Mr Carr and for that we thank you!