Chancellor 'shocked' at tax evasion rates

While the 50 per cent tax rate has been dropped to 45 per cent, many people are still trying desperately to lower their tax bills - something that appears to have come as a surprise to the Chancellor.

George Osborne told the Daily Telegraph that the very wealthiest individuals should be paying around a third of their income in tax and stated his shock at seeing that some of the country's highest earning individuals pay just ten per cent.

The Chancellor was shown 'anonymised copies' of tax returns by HMRC that uncovered the extent of the tax avoidance being undertaken by the wealthy. While he was not given the individual's information, he did state that the details confirmed that the 20 biggest tax avoiders in the country managed to reduce their income tax bills by a total of £145 million a year.

He told the paper: "I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right."