Jeremy Corbyn just released his 2014/2015 tax return. Leaving aside the fact that the really juicy stuff (the payments from the Iranian government via PressTV, the money he accepted from Capita) is in previous years, and the fact that there’s something faintly infra-dig about an MP scrabbling around for £80 here and £75 there doing surveys that take an hour when he presumably has other work relating to constituency business to be getting on with, there does appear to be something of interest in what he has reported here.
Jeremy Corbyn’s tax return declares £1350 of income from lectures for the April 2014 to April 2015 period and £500 for survey income.
The parliamentary register provides a second source against which to check this. It shows the following payments;
· 9 April 2014, received £150 for lecture on 8 April 2014.�Hours: 1 hr. (Registered 14 May 2014)
· Received £150 for lecture on 16 December 2014. Hours: 1 hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· Received £150 for lecture on 20 January 2015. Hours: 1 hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· Received £150 for lecture on 10 March 2015. Hours: 1 hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· Payments from ComRes, 4 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA, for opinion surveys:
· 9 June 2014, £75 received for April 2014 survey. Hours: 1 hr. (Registered 26 March 2015)
· 5 August 2014, £75 received for May/Jun 2014 survey. Hours: 90 mins. (Registered 26 March 2015)
· £75 received for Jan/Feb survey. Hours: 90 mins. (Registered 26 March 2015)
· Payments for FCO course lectures — CSL, PO Box 202, Darlington DL1 9HB:
· Received £150 for lecture on 15 May 2014. Hours: 1hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· Received £150 for lecture on 12 June 2014. Hours: 1hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· Received £150 for lecture on 19 June 2014. Hours: 1hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· Received £150 for lecture on 3 July 2014. Hours: 1hr. (Registered 16 March 2015)
· 9 June 2014, received payment of £80 from YouGov, 50 Featherstone Street, London, EC1Y 8RT, for online survey. Hours: 1 hr. (Registered 26 March 2015)
On that information, I count £1200 of lecture income and £230 of survey income. Whether or not he could have obtained any advantage from misreporting his income if he indeed did so, it does speak to the contempt with which he treated the process of filing his tax return. This can also be deduced from the fact he didn’t even bother to answer any of the questions on page two and couldn’t be bothered to fill out his interest income (which he must have earned if he has any savings at all).
Jeremy Corbyn cannot claim a moral high ground on tax issues if he treats HMRC with contempt in making his own declarations.
