Charles Moore's tax avoidance tip

Last week, volume one of my life of Margaret Thatcher won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. This made me feel greatly honoured, because I knew and loved Elizabeth — she was our country neighbour — and admired her own biographies greatly. It is also undeniably pleasant to get £5,000 without having to do any extra work, or even apply. This is the third monetary prize that my book has won, and I have been thrilled to discover that prizes attract no tax at all, so £5,000 is £5,000. Since ‘aggressive’ tax avoidance is the in thing, I would recommend that organisations wishing to confer extra rewards on staff should combine with others in their trade — for example, in banking — and invent, let us say, the Lehman Brothers Memorial Prize. They would then pool the enormous sums which in the old days they would have paid as bonuses and turn them into untaxed trade awards.