“tax error was careless”
of course it was careless… he couldn’t care less (until he was caught) 
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Well being quite wealthy is more likely to produce someone competent than not, even if it’s not very fair.
I can see your point but eliminating successful people from running the country sounds a bit like moving in the direction of the lowest common denominator.
And tax avoidance is legal and a level of it is nuts not to indulge in, it’s evasion that is not legal.
But having been caught out this man really has to resign. The earlier generations of Tories at least had the class to, when caught redhanded
Caught out for doing what though?
People don’t have to pay a million pound penalty when they have done nothing wrong.
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Nadhim Zahawi: Tax error was careless and not deliberate
This sort of ‘I meant no harm guv, I didn’t know about it’ excuse always reminds me of the thread that ran through the entire Father Ted show that Ted was sent to Craggy Island because of misappropriation of funds and the resulting phrase he was often heard to say…
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In a sane world, no-one who was careless with cash would get near the job of chancellor.
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WHAT? 
Just like the last thirteen years of ‘fiscal prudence” has sorted everything out’? You need to stop looking at macroeconomics through a microeconomics lens. This isn’t about balancing a family budget, though the Tories sell it to the naive that way, this is about the Tories riding the arse (an economic technical term) off Joe and Jane Soap to feather the nest of themselves and their pals/supporters. Who has profited AND who has suffered from “austerity”,? And yet after all these tough years the Country is in a worse condition than it was before. Groundhog day. It’s con Tim, wake up.
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So what do you think Labour will do John, tax or borrow the extra tens of billions needed every year to play ‘catch-up’ with the under funding of public services since 2010?
The issue here is whether it was deliberate or careless, Zahawi says the latter which is why the fine was less than if it had been a clear attempt to deceive. What he should have done last year is fess up when this first came out and by now the media would have moved on to something else.
I go back to what I’ve said suggested previously, the only way to ensure politicians are squeaky clean when they enter politics is to force them to give up all investments etc.
“Give up all investments” is not realistic (it would include any private pension to which contributions had been made, for instance).
However, there should not be a conflict of interest, or even potential conflict of interest though - no cushy 2nd jobs paying £20k a year for doing three minutes work a month à la Kwarteng (and many others) for instance.
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Most of us have pensions so they could be excluded, how many of us though have directorships, trusts and offshore interests?
Only a few percent I’d guess.
But to have to “give up” investments legitimately acquired would put off a lot of professionals and entrepreneurs from standing.
Give up control, or take no income from perhaps.
Unfortunately the more money you have the more complex your tax affairs tend to be, and the more scope for dabbling investments which fall somewhere in between the “obviously legitimate” investments which have tax advantages and the “clearly questionable ones”, or even “downright illegal” ones.
It’s not a black and white issue, much more shades of grey and while you *could* solve that by saying “OK, none then” we’re back to a position which will reduce the variety of experience going into parliament.
An intelligence test for prospective MPs would help as well 
It’s not just intelligence that counts but combining it with common sense too.
Also a willingness to listen to those who have the relevant experience and information and not just plough their own furrow regardless.
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Looks like even HMRC tax inspectors think Zahawi should resign…
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Unfortunately, the Labour we have now probably will just tinker - borrow a little bit more, tax a little bit more, make things a little bit better - but it won’t undertake the radical changes that are really needed to bring the UK back to where its close neighbours are in terms of their public services, utilities and transport infrastructures, welfare states, education and health systems, trade or environment.
The big danger is the feeling that things are falling apart and aren’t going to get much better continuing for many years, while Labour doesn’t do enough to change them - and the increasing social and political polarisation that this doomy feeling propagates leads to the far right roaring back.
But the fact that the UK is stuck with poor politicians now doesn’t mean there are no solutions in principle. They’re not ‘magic’ solutions - but as @John_Scully says, neither are they to be found in the equally magical illusion that a national economy is like a household or business budget. Just look at what the left government in Portugal - a Socialist, Communist and Green Party alliance - did after the country’s almost total economic collapse. It not only rejected ‘austerity’ - it had to specifically negotiate this with the same ‘Troika’ that had imposed it (disastrously) on Greece. Even without the benefit of total control of its own currency - which the UK has - it succeeded in just a few years in almost completely reversing the dire economic situation that had swallowed the country, and embarking on a decade of good stable leftwing government.
The UK left Labour MP Clive Lewis wrote during the UK’s brexit debate:
Portuguese socialists, in their determination to bring radical, immediate and practical benefit
to citizens’ lives, were able to prove in real time that those austerity measures had been broadly
economically damaging as well as ideologically driven. In doing so – increasing the minimum
wage, unfreezing pensions, increasing tax on corporations, attacking precariousness in the workplace and reversing privatisation – the country proved both an inspiration to others and a test bed for a new relationship between individual nations and the institutions of the EU, one that was closer to the egalitarian ambitions of its founders.
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I don’t give a damn what Labour will do Tim? I’m not a politician nor an economist and I don’t make a habit of buying a dog and barking myself. The first step on the road to recovery is the defenestration of the smug bastards that have brought Britain to her knees. No ifs, no buts, just F-off. Your Eeyore-esque attitude that anybody else will be just as bad is mistaken. Nobody could be as bad.
As for Zahawi, he’s a crook, plain and simple. Nobody is “careless” with £3.7M. Nobody who has hidden shares away in his father’s name in Gibraltar and then lies about the beneficial ownership of the trust while being paid dividends from it, is being “careless”. It was a considered and deliberate arrangement that he thought he’d get away with.
The fact that when he was caught he was able to “do a deal” without being prosecuted is a disgrace. Why wouldn’t he have had a go at avoiding CGT when there’s no downside? The “way to ensure politicians are squeaky clean” is that when they break they law, in his case through fraud and deception, they suffer repercussions.
I’d also like to expand that concept to those that screw the Country and its citizens through incompetence, lies and maladministration. For example, Johnson should be swinging by his heels from a lamppost somewhere “pour encourager les autres”, not swanning around as if none of this shitfest is his fault. Farage should be swinging from the lamppost opposite him. In fact, there could be a shortage of suitable lampposts if justice was to be truly done.
IMO a large amount of visceral anger in the British masses is required.
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Double click Mr Scully
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Labour are doing just the same. Remember when the Milibands avoided a whole load of inheritance tax when their Marxist father left them his mansion through a “deed of variation”?
Why does a life-long Marxist have a mansion, you ask?
****ed if I know.
You ought to because they’ll likely be in power well into the 2030’s.