In most tax regimes, only expenses which are solely and wholly for the purposes of business are tax deductible.

An individual claiming what are clearly personal comforts as business expenses may well find himself the centre of the living nightmare that is a tax investigation. An organisation that permits such abuse on a large scale will be practically closed down by tax-men crawling all over it.

So when a large organisation in the United Kingdom got very stupid and very greedy, allowing its people to make the most ridiculous expense claims, and deducting them from taxable income for the purposes of Britain’s increasingly draconian revenue laws, one might expect squads of tax inspectors to be turning the place over at dawn.

Not when the organisation in question is the House of Commons – Britain’s parliament and the organisation responsible for those increasingly Draconian revenue laws.

Entrepreneurs imagining this is a signal that we peasants can be as lax in our expense claims as our self-indulgent rulers needs to be warned that the complete opposite will soon come to pass.

Although there could be no better punishment of our avaricious politicians than letting the tax-men loose on them – let them feel how the rest of us live – that is very unlikely to happen. Instead the tax-men will use the scandal as a pretext to clamp down on the expenses of some more vulnerable group – entrepreneurs.

So always do what the Members of Parliament did not do: ensure all expense claims are legitimate and, even if morally justified, don’t push your luck.

Never be so foolish as to imagine for a second that rulers and ruled are equal before the law.