osborne tweet
© Twitter
On 29 October 2014, George Osborne tweeted "Tax evasion is not just illegal it's immoral.People evading tax should be treated same as common thieves."

On 7 April 2016, his boss, David Cameron admitted befitting from a tax-avoiding offshore fund.


Unsurprisingly, Osborne's original tweet is now doing the rounds again with more than a few people pointing out the irony.




Cameron insisted he does not have "anything to hide" about his financial affairs after revealing he and his wife sold shares worth more than £30,000 in an offshore tax haven fund set up by his late father.

The Prime Minister has faced intense pressure to detail his interests since the Panama Papers leaks included details of Blairmore Holdings - which used "bearer shares" to protect investors' privacy.


In an interview with ITV News, he insisted it was a "fundamental misconception" that it was set up to avoid tax, saying his father Ian was being "unfairly written about".

And he said that while his and Samantha's profit from the scheme was "subject to all the UK taxes in the normal ways" - it came to just below the threshold at which capital gains tax would have applied.

He said: "In all of this I've never hidden the fact that I'm a very lucky person who had wealthy parents, who gave me a great upbringing, who paid for me to go to an amazing school.

"I have never tried to pretend to be anything I am not. But I was keen in 2010 to sell everything - shares, all the rest of it - so I can be very transparent. I don't own any part of any company or any investment trust or anything else like that."


Number 10 said Mr and Mrs Cameron bought their holding in April 1997 for £12,497 and sold it in January 2010 for £31,500.

The annual personal allowance for an individual in 2009-10 was £10,100 - meaning jointly the profit was just outside the threshold.

Mr Cameron, who has been a prominent campaigner for increased tax transparency, also repeated his willingness to publish his own tax returns.

Downing Street later confirmed this will take place "as soon as possible".

On Friday morning the hashtag #resigncameron was top trend on Twitter.