AND as well as eyeing the National Lottery lolly, Treasury officials are reportedly plotting to raid another pile of money, with plans to tax the whole of redundancy payments.

At present, the first £30,000 of pay-outs to people who lose their jobs is tax-free.

But the government's revenue men somehow think scrapping that concession would be popular...as a swipe at the so-called "fat cats."

But greedy bosses would not be the real losers in any attack on their golden goodbye bonanzas.

The ones to suffer if redundancy deals were totally taxed would be the ordinary people collecting just a few thousand pounds when their jobs are axed.

That's a nest-egg they need to see them through until they get another job - and tens of thousands in the higher age groups are never so lucky.

This plan has the same backfire potential as the government's misguided tax raid on share options.

The ones hit by that scheme were the ordinary employees threatened with their bonuses being bitten into by the Inland Revenue while the fat cats suffered no worse than a financial flea bite.

On top of this, the proposed tax of redundancy pay-outs would only force more unemployed people into the benefits system sooner than they are already, producing no real saving in government expenditure.

And the less harsh avenue of voluntary redundancy would become increasingly unavailable to firms forced to make cutbacks, as fewer employees would opt to quit if they see the taxman poised to swoop on their pay-outs.

Politically, this scheme expects people to take kindly to losing their jobs and being taxed for it - and at a time when job insecurity is rife.

Dressing it up as an attack on executive greed won't fool the voters.

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