So who’s next to play my tax return is bigger than yours?
GEORGE
THE Chancellor will be nervous about the spotlight shifting to his opaque financial affairs. George Osborne, left, is an heir to the Osborne & Little wallpaper empire – with a shareholding reported to be worth £4 million.
The Chancellor, who earns £135,527 as a Cabinet Minister, looked uneasy when he was asked last week whether he had any offshore interests, saying only that his financial interests were ‘properly declared’. Osborne & Little has attracted controversy for not paying corporation tax since 2008. The Chancellor pays a nominal sum to live at 11 Downing Street, and lets out his £4 million townhouse in West London for more than £10,000 a month.
BORIS
THE London Mayor is at the height of his earning powers, taking home hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from politics and journalism. Boris Johnson, left, has benefited from doubling up as both Mayor, which pays him £143,911 until May, and an MP, with a salary of £74,000. But his biggest payday comes from his job as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, which earned him £274,000 last year. He has also received £105,000 since last May for a book he is writing on Shakespeare. He lives in a £5million London home, left, and has a second in Oxfordshire thought to be worth £1million.
... OR EVEN JEZZA
UNLIKE his Conservative opponents, the Labour leader will not be troubling any Rich Lists in the near future. Mr Corbyn received a decent pay rise when he won the leadership last September, lifting his £74,000 MP salary to £125,000.
But in keeping with his ascetic, cold-beans-out-ofthe-tin image, Mr Corbyn, left, has not lined his pocket during his 40-year political career. Nor have two divorces helped: he lives with his third wife, Laura, in a £600,000 house at the wrong end of Islington – not expensive by the standards of the capital.
Stating his intention to publish his own tax returns last week, Mr Corbyn said: ‘They are very, very limited indeed. ‘I have got an income as an MP. Sadly, I have got no family trusts of any sort.’