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| No receipt: John Durning has never been asked for a receipt from Ed Balls despite cleaning the windows at his Castleford home once a month. Ed Balls insisted that he hadn't paid for anything in cash without getting a receipt for two decades. But almost half the Labour cabinet claimed thousands of pounds without submitting a receipt. |
'I've cleaned Ed Balls's windows for 17 years but he's never asked me to give him a receipt': Shadow Chancellor is accused of hypocrisy: Ed Balls was accused of ‘total hypocrisy’ last night after his window cleaner revealed he has never asked for a receipt in 17 years.
The Shadow Chancellor (pictured) provoked controversy at the weekend when he lectured families on their duty to collect receipts and personal details from window cleaners, gardeners, house cleaners and handymen, no matter how small the job done. Mr Balls said he always followed the practice – and had done ‘since I have been involved in politics’.
But inquiries in Castleford, West Yorkshire, where he and his MP wife Yvette Cooper have a family home, have shown that he has never asked his window cleaning firm for a receipt despite employing them for nearly two decades. Pontefract Window Cleaning Services last night confirmed it had never been asked for a receipt by Mr Balls. The firm cleans the windows at the three-storey Balls family home once a month, charging £12 each time.
Christine Durning, 66, who handles the family firm’s paperwork, refused to criticise Mr Balls for his comments and said she ‘didn’t want to get involved in any controversy’. But she added: ‘I’m not doing anything wrong here, I’m just telling you the facts and I don’t give him a receipt and he doesn’t ask for a receipt.’
Mrs Durning said the well-established family firm had never been asked for a receipt by any of its customers. Instead they simply take cash or cheque or write their customers a note to inform them money is due. Her son John, 34, who cleans the MPs’ windows, said: ‘It only takes me about ten minutes to do, it’s no problem. After each clean I drop a note through the door which states, “Your windows have been cleaned”.
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| Under the old expenses system, MPs could designate either a London home or a constituency property as their second home. They could then change the designation of their second home – nicknamed ‘flipping’ – and increase the amount they could claim for mortgage interest payments. Together they claimed a total of £24,400 on their second-home allowance. A Tory MP said it was wrong for them to claim the London property as their second home when they spent most of their time there. |
Shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves (pictured) has been speaking to the World at One about what people are apparently now calling “receipt gate”. She said that wealthy individuals avoiding tax was the biggest problem, not window cleaners avoiding tax. Politics Home has the quotes in full:
Both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have been clear that we want to tackle tax avoidance, and tax evasion. But where is the real problem here? The real big problem is with some hedge funds, there are some very wealthy individuals and companies who are not paying their fair share of tax in this country. I think all of us, at some point; have paid for work without getting a receipt. If you are paying for a window cleaner or something like that, you know it’s not always that easy to get a receipt.
The real issue here is about cracking down on tax avoidance and ensuring that we close that tax gap. The tax gap under this government between what should have been collected and what is collected is £34bn. That is not through window cleaners and hedge trimmers, that is through some very wealthy companies and individuals getting out of paying their fair share of tax, and the result of that is the rest of us end up paying more taxes, and that’s not right.
Also see - Fact: People Respect Window Cleaners More Than Politicians
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