Fiscal nightmare just the job to challenge Charlie

Charlie may have been the darling of the masses this week, dipping into the overflowing national coffers to dispense some unaccustomed seasonal warmth to mostly all and sundry. He can well afford a redistribution of largesse from the excess fat on the Celtic Tiger. Perhaps the slab-faced mandarin needs his mettle honed by a Challenge Charlie fiscal nightmare. Secondment to the Democratic Republic of Congo or alternatively the Russian region of Nizhny Novgorod would do nicely. Charlie's culture-loving counterpart in the Congo has curiously just slapped a new tax on bread and 40 other essential products and services - including coffins and tombstones - to finance a "cultural promotion fund". The local equivalent of Sile de Valera is over the moon, but bakeries, with an extra two per cent tax on gross profits, are as sick as a rainforest parrot, as is the service sector. In the colder climes of Nizhny Novgorod, some 250 miles east of Moscow, times are equally taxing, particularly for what the administration terms "nouveaux riche tax-dodgers". No sweeteners here in corporate or personal taxation. Instead, in a revenue-saving scheme many country houses will be seized without compensation and converted into children's homes. Tax evasion and avoidance by the wealthy is said to be eroding a tight social budget. Charlie would find much that is familiar. The rest of us can count our blessings.