Jeremy Corbyn has OVER-PAID the taxman in the past year, his office has revealed.
A review of his tax return income has found that the Labour leader mistakenly declared £270 more than he should have for 2014/15.
Mr Corbyn’s office told HuffPost UK that his MPs’ register of interest revealed that as a backbencher he had received £1200 for eight lectures for Parliament and the Foreign Office between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015.
But on his tax form he had mistakenly declared one extra payment to take his total to £1,350.
He had also made an error in his calculations of the number of opinion poll surveys. He was paid £380 for taking part in surveys for ComRes and YouGov, but declared £500 on his tax form by mistake.
The errors, which Mr Corbyn’s office blamed on the fact that he was a backbencher with no accountant to file his return, mean that the Labour leader could now be entitled to a tax rebate for the financial year 2014/15.
Mr Corbyn confirmed yesterday that he had filed his tax return late and was fined £100 as a result.
Although some critics seized on his late filing as proof of his ‘shambolic’ approach, allies of the Islington North MP said it just showed how similar he was to many ordinary members of the public.
Mr Corbyn’s copy of his tax return also failed to include his pension income – from his job before being an MP and believed to amount to the low hundreds of pounds – but HuffPost UK has been told that the taxman already had a full account of his pension income and it was included on his official return.
It emerged today that the Labour leader did register several of his lecture payments several months after he should have, a fact that could lead to a reprimand from Parliament’s watchdog.
“He did submit some of them late, but you have to remember he was just a backbencher,” one source said.
But his office insisted that he had fully complied with all his tax duties and responsibilities.
“It appears that Jeremy has over-declared his modest earnings by a small amount to the tax man,” a spokesman said.
“What he certainly has done is declare all his earnings and income and paid his tax in full and in the normal way. He has definitely not underpaid the tax man.
“And unlike the Prime Minister and George Osborne, he has actually published his actual tax return, rather than a summary of it.”
When it emerged that he had filed his form late, one aide pointed out: "Jeremy does not have an accountant. Like many people, he does the form himself."
A detailed review of Mr Corbyn’s Register of Interests in 2014 and 2015 shows that he delivered eight lectures, each worth £150, from April 8, 2014 to 10 March, 2015.
He also took part in four £75 surveys for ComRes, from 24 April 2014 to Feburary 2015, and one £80 YouGov survey on 9 June 2014.
The Labour leader declared a total additional income of £1,850 from his lectures and filling out surveys.
When added to his salary as an MP, that took his total income for 2014/15 to £70,795, paying a tax sum of £18,912.
Next year he will have to declare an extra £63,098 income he receives as Leader of the Opposition, which will take his total salary to more than £137,000.
After the ‘Panama Papers’ leak of his private share income, David Cameron took the unprecedented step of revealing his own tax affairs this weekend.
His statement showed that he had an annual income of more than £200,000, made up of his salary and rental income on his home.
Mr Osborne also revealed that he too had an annual income of nearly £200,000, thanks to rental income from his London home and dividends on shares in his family wallpaper firm.