Liverpool mayor: John Coyne publishes tax return and challenges other candidates to follow
It seemed almost inevitable that with what has happened in the London mayoral election, someone would suggest it in Liverpool.
Green party Liverpool mayor candidate John Coyne is the first off the mark to publish his tax returns and challenge other candidates to do the same.
"The Green Party has always been at the forefront of openness and transparency in politics and we will take the lead in
Liverpool," he said.
In 2009/10 Cllr Coyne, earned his councillor allowance of £10,044 and £4,322 from a pension. He paid £1,584 in tax.
The following year his income from the council jumped to £15,578 as a result of Cllr Coyne's additional council responsibilities in chairing the environment scrutiny committee.
It would have been about £3,000 higher, but Cllr Coyne has chosen not to claim the full amount he is entitled to from the council.
He said: "In 2010 the incoming Labour administration increased the number of scrutiny committees so the Green Party proposed that allowances for chairs of committees should be cut by around £3,000 to save money in difficult economic times.
He also received his personal pension of £4,325, and in 2010/11 he paid £2,998 in tax.
So who will be next?
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David Bartlett
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Talk about jumping in the nearest bandwagon!
Personally, I couldn't care less about how much they earn, tax they pay or what they do with it. I care about whether or not they're up to the job of running our great city.
Mr Coyne has shown that he is clearly not and has just lost my vote.
Shocking opportunism.
Why not get the taxes out there? In fact I think it's crucial that this is done. We've seen Labour bouncing Herbert Howe out of the race saying they'll find skeletons, well let's see what skeletons Uncle Joe has got. He earns a massive salary for being leader of a political party in the city. Let's see your taxes, Joe.
I would of course like a discussion about policy but there just becoming petty squabbles. I want taxes, something I can genuinely compare between all the candidates.
We want to see taxes! Those failing to do so, I won't consider giving my vote to.
What is to be gained from seeing a local politicians taxes? They can be compared can they Mr Creek? Well think on - if, like a lot of people in this city, you're taxed through PAYE, you don't send tax returns.
No, you want to know how much they earn, and then sling mud at them. Well, Joe Anderson's renumeration as a council employee is a matter of public record - old news.
Heard this all before. And you don't earn a salary for being the boss of a political party. It's just not how these things are run.
If it's a matter of public record then he should have no problem providing it. So who are you kidding. He's reported to earn in excess of £300k. I bet he pays tax at about 15% with his rich mate chief executives all on the council gravy train passing on their tips for avoidance.
Publish your taxes Joe, you fat cat hypocrite.
This whole tax return thing is not going to do any good. It is guaranteed to be used to say 'He/She earns a lot, they are not in touch with ordinary people' or some such thing. Most people won't pay attention to the tax paid, only the amount earned.
And I can guarantee that the people who will be punished by this are people who own and run businesses, regardless of whether they avoid any tax or not.
Peter Creek is clearly just interested in misinformation. Amderson earns £300K?? What a ridiculous statement. His Council remuneration is available for all to see on the Council website and it is a whole lot less than that. (circa £60k for Councillor allowance plus Leader's allowance). Not a small amount but a lot less than what someone responsible for the leadership of a global city should get.
And councillors are only on £10k as Coyne shows. After tax that is only £2k more than the state pension!
And as for publishing tax returns - Councillors do not set income tax levels so why doe sit matter except to point and say "he/she earns a lot don't they?". The politics of envy. No decision they make affects their taxation in relation to pay. It could be argued about who gets Council Tax rebate, Council Tax relief or what band property they have (the latter being less appropriate) but income tax is nothing to do with it.
What they earn as Councillors is a matter of public record. It is published every year. Coyne is simply jumping on a bandwagon desperate to be seen.
Excellent news. Transparency has to be the way forward after Tory sleaze and Labour MPs and Lords' expenses.
Joe Anderson like to use rules against people for his own advantage, as Wavertree CC can testify. I feel sure he fiddles his taxes too, so let's see how trustworthy he is. Another Ken Liviningstone in our midst, pocketing hundreds of thousands and keeping his snout in the trough.
You'll know all about fiddling, Peter Creek. Try typing with both hands for a change
The Leader of the Council has a special responsibility allowance of £42,100, plus a backbench allowance of £10,044. That is the total sum. £52,144 for running a big city the size of Liverpool. And he is paid through LCC payroll, like every other council, a payroll which is subject to PAYE and NI, like you would expect. Peter Creek is hugely ignorant of local government to imagine that a councillor would get £300k. Even the paid and salaried staff don't get that much.
I'll endorse what Louise has said and I'd expect Joe to respond to our challenge with that straight information to the press (I hope he is feeling better btw).
This is much more problematic for Richard Kemp. At the weekend he effectively endorsed Nick Clegg's view that "...Politicians, as servants of the public, should make our own arrangements transparent," by retweeting a link to this quote. Yet when faced with the actual challenge of living up to that standard, his response has been underwhelming.
Richard is a good local councillor and represents his ward well, as shown by the fact that he held his seat despite a massive swing against the Liberal Democrats last year. However, he has chosen to stand for Mayor and that demands higher standards. To be consistent and to "walk the walk" he should publish.
This issue is going to come back during the campaign because we will bring it back. You can't say one thing then when challenged fail to follow it up.
While Louise will tell us what she thinks Joe Anderson gets, it would be good to hear it from Joe that the figure is accurate.
Truth is that with different people as directors of different boards, no one really knows who is on what.
( Myself I would dearly like to know what payments are going to the directors of the likes of the 100 % council owned Echo Arena and BT conference centre. )
Where fact is missing, imagination will take its place.
It is not what I think he gets, it is a matter of public record, declared on the council website, voted for at full council, in public, in front of anyone who cared to be there. It is not a secret. It is even detailed on these pages if you go back far enough.
"What's good enough for London Mayoral candidates is good enough for Liverpool"??
Louise, there was a controversy about Joe's council earnings when he became leader. He said he took a drop in his earnings going full time and I believe that.
To put it beyond doubt, let's see his tax statements for the previous two financial years. A statement confirming he has not had to do a tax return and images of his P60s/P45s would do nicely.
It's the same kind of openness we forced when we did a FoI request on councillor's expenses. As you blogged at the time, apart from a couple of amusing stories about sardines and Chrismas day meetings, councillors were shown to be pretty clean about what they claimed.
There have been statements from Richard Kemp and Joe Anderson's campaign in regards to this and you can find them on the Northern Blog on the Guardian site.
Richard said:
"This is tokenistic nonsense. The public have an absolute right to know what I earn from the public sector and what I do for it. That information is readily available and should be. I also have to declare any financial interests on a copy kept by the council and to declare pecuniary interests in debates. That is sufficient to ensure total probity."
and a spokesperson from the Joe Anderson campaign said:
"Councillor Anderson does not make an individual tax return. Like the vast majority of Liverpool people, he pays tax through PAYE which is deducted at source. As Leader of the City Council his income is a matter of public record."
It seems both campaigns are still ignoring the challenge - why? Both Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick provided their full information in the public arena. Why not the candidates from Labour and the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool?
The first thing that has to be said is congratulations to Joe Anderson and Labour on a strong campaign. There is no getting away from the fact that he won over 50% of the popular vote, and that Labour won 64.5% of the city wide vote. That is a big mandate and even opposition parties should acknowledge that fact.
I think the city would have benefited from a more competitive Mayoral contest. I still think it is a mistake that the other candidates didn't match John Coyne's full disclosure of his tax affairs.
Instead we ended up making do with second hand information and the holding response I posted by Joe Anderson's campaign in the previous commment.
Richard Kemp actually provided information to the Express newspaper about his [2011] tax return, where he says: “I have in front of me our tax returns for last year. In total, I earned £61,400 before tax..."
Unlike London, where we had full transparency, Liverpool's politicians didn't match up this time round. Let's hope we see an improvement next time.
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