The new rules will both codify old tax cases and give tax collectors more flexibility to crack down on excessive compensation.

But he went on to say: "Lately there has been a healthy debate about excessive compensation in our Police Department.

The board said the excessive compensation was based on artificially inflated profits.

He called the measure "a moderate and temperate approach to the issue of runaway and excessive compensation."

Our culture of excessive compensation has never really caught on there.

Conspiciously absent from the new rules are two proposals that would have had the greatest impact on excessive compensation of all those before the commission.

He added, however, that shareholders who were harmed by excessive compensation could be hurt further by having the deduction removed.

Last year, one of the main political questions was whether anything should be done about the supposedly excessive compensation paid to British arable farmers, for example.

Yesterday, the forces against excessive compensation won one.

The forgiving of loans offered to chief executives is one popular way of disguising excessive compensation.