Prepare yourself for a new MP expenses story; this time about Dennis Bates, an accountant who is married to Labour MP Meg Munn (pictured).

The Telegraph is set to publish a story querying why several MPs used his services; they include John Healey, Gillian Merron, Jim Knight and one of the Angela Smiths.

Their excuse - which seems reasonable enough - is that Bates worked for 12 years at the Inland Revenue as a specialist in the tax affairs of small businesses. Thus he was eminently qualified.

What will be interesting is to know whether his advice was obtained in relation to office costs (as is clearly permitted in the Parliamentary Green Book) or for personal tax advice (which is more of a grey area).

BTW

If you haven’t caught up on today’s news about the Wintertons (both) resigning at the next election there is more here. They insist their resignation is to spend more time with their family and nothing to do with their controversial expense claims (which earned them a ticking off last year).

You can see how much of a squeeze the government is in by looking at the figures for its tax receipts.

Projections for 2009/10 are:

Income tax £140bn (against an estimate of £152bn in 08/09)

VAT £63.7bn (£78.4bn)

Capital gains tax £2.2bn (£7.8bn)

Stamp duties £5bn (£8bn)

Inheritance tax £2.3bn (£2.9bn)

Petroleum revenue tax £1.1bn (£2.6bn)

As a result, the total take by HMRC is expected to be £394bn this year, against an estimate of £427bn last year and £451bn the previous year. Ouch.

Total receipts, which include business rates, council tax and vehicle excise duties, will be about £496bn against £548bn in 2007-8.

If you want to take away two main points from today’s Budget they are these:

1] Borrowing is about to go through the roof. The figure for public sector net borrowing (PSNB) was just 2.4 per cent in 2007/8. It will have jumped to a punitive 12.4 per cent this year, before easing back to 11.9 per cent, 9.1 per cent, 7.2 per cent and (by 2013-14) 5. 5 per cent.

For this to take place, however, you have to believe some pretty optimistic forecasts from the chancellor.

2] Alistair Darling is predicting that consumer demand will return to pre-boom levels within a couple of years. And that GDP growth will be (after a 3.5 per cent fall this year) 1.25 per cent in 2010/11, compared to independent forecasts of 0.3 per cent. From then on the government expects annual growth of 3.5 per cent, a much more buoyant prediction than the Bank of England’s 2. 5 per cent.

The FT revealed on Tuesday that Darling would have to issue more than £200bn of government bonds this financial year, far above market expectations.

“With public borrowing set to soar to £170bn-£180bn, the chancellor will have to tap the market for an issuance of gilts that will be well over £50bn higher than the Debt Management Office estimated last month,” we wrote.

It turns out that the situation is even worse. A staggering £220bn of gilts will have to be issued in the current financial year, up from £146.4bn forecast in the November PBR (see Page 246 of the Budget red book.)

You might have forgotten this but the Tories proposed - exactly six months ago - a scheme to let companies defer their VAT payments.

Problem is, this would have only been for….um…..six months.

Given where we are in the economic cycle (things are getting even worse) does this suggest the Conservatives were far too over-optimistic about the duration of the downturn?

From the original press release:

“On Sunday the Conservatives will call on the Government to allow small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to defer their VAT bills for up to 6 months in order to help businesses struggling with cash flow problems due to the credit crunch.”

The OECD are on the verge of publishing a black list of countries that are unwilling to sign up to information sharing agreements. This morning this list contained six countries. But it has halved in size as the leaders have realised that they could do without the shame.

The three countries that are going to be fingered are Costa Rica, the Philippines, and Uruguay.

The three countries that committed this afternoon to reaching information sharing agreements are Brunei, Guatemala and Malaysia.

Amazing what a bit of public naming and shaming can do.

UPDATE

Well, Malaysia decided to live with the discomfort of joining the blacklist. Here is the OECD progress report.

Details are emerging of a deal on tax havens. The G20 has agreed that the OECD will publish a list imminently, which will have three categories.

The first will be for those territories that have already concluded their tax information sharing agreements (this includes Jersey and some other UK dependencies.

The second will include countries including Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria, which have committed to better information exchange but have not yet agreed all the agreements.

The third black list will be used to name and shame authorities that have not even committed to the information sharing agreements.

It seems that this has satisfied any concerns the Chinese may have had.

UPDATE

This seems to be a significant step forward. I’m told there are about 40 countries in the clear, about 38 on the ‘will do better’ list, and 6 countries that are named and shamed on the black list.

The countries fingered on the black list are not the usual suspects, which is interesting. I’ll put it up once it is triple checked. There is then a separate list of countries which have yet to be assessed, which could be how China has been satisfied over the Macao issue.

The elegance of this compromise is apparently that the list will be published by the OECD, rather than the G20. So expect some oblique reference in the final communique.

The Guardian picked up this morning on our blog on Baroness Hooper failing to mention her directorship at Barclays while defending tax havens in a Lord debate last week.

It’s taken a week to get hold of the baroness but we finally spoke at 11pm last night. Hooper explained why she had not mentioned that she was chair of the advisory committee for Barclays European Infrastructure Fund.

“I don’t think it had any relevance to the debate so…it is a declared interest in any event, that said I don’t think there is any problem with that,” she said.

The obvious relevance, of course, is that Barclays is fighting accusations that it has been running a vast tax avoidance unit. (Although I should emphasise the Baroness has nothing to do with it directly).