Bankers Offer to Overpay on UK Bonus Tax

No, really, I am completely serious:

Some of the most senior bankers in Britain are planning to convince the Treasury to drop the new 50% tax on bonuses by dangling the prospect of a combined contribution to the exchequer of £2bn. The promise of the boost to Britain's depleted coffers has been made in recent days and is almost four times the £550m Alistair Darling has said he intends to raise through his payroll tax on bonuses. The Chancellor has been met with anger in the City since he announced the one-off tax in his pre-budget report last week and been warned of a mass exodus of high-flying bankers to countries with a less punitive tax regime.

(emphasis mine)

I don't know what is going on here, but when Britain's own little vampire squids wrapped around the face of humanity,^* decide that it's time to overpay their taxes by a factor of 4, something very hinky going on.

Somewhere in these bonus pools that Chancellor Darling wants to tax is something bad....Something Really, Really, Really, Really bad.

We are talking something murder-for-hire and laundering drug money through child prostitutes bad. Something is rotten in the Street City,^† and they, whoever exactly they are, very badly want it covered up.

^*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine.
^†The UK equivalent of Wall Street. Corrected my error on edit.