Its not just about tax avoidance, its a about providing financial services to the worlds ****s, even when there are clear legal restrictions.
This is UK plc's stock and trade, and listening to the agents of these companies (our politicians) has been beyond comedy today.
So is it ok to pay gardener or handyman in cash up to £100 or £1000 or £10000 and save the VAT? If
no I cant remember when I last paid cash to any tradesman
we even pay our window cleaner online!
Its also the secrecy aspect when you have to pay a few grand to a 'facilitator' like the Fonseca douches you know its dodgy, whether you are hiding Columbian drug money or maximising your income to put wee dave through Eton
ok, so what is the threshold when it becomes unacceptable to avoid tax?
simple question....
jambalaya - MemberUnderstood but you have a misconception about that, top 1% are paying 27% of tax collected. The vast ...
i'm not really talking about the 1%. There are by definition, 700,000 '1percenters' in The UK. Are they all offshoring their non-dom billions through a complex arrangement of shadowy shell corporations?
no. we're [u]all[/u] getting dry-bummed by a few thousand people who've actually got all the money.
Personally never, must be because I was a good Scout or something, I looked into the cycle scheme for my commuter, but not for my proper bike -didnt use it anyway as I found a better deal at CRC (are they tax dodgers?)
ok, so what is the threshold when it becomes unacceptable to avoid tax?
Really depends on your definition of avoid. If the sole purpose of the financial vehicle / transaction method is to avoid tax then the threshold is £0. So any cash in hand is unacceptable.
If the vehicle is specifically permitted, eg an ISA, then I don't consider that avoidance. E.g. with an ISA 'society' had deemed that the benefit of encouraging people to save outweighs the cost of loss of tax revenue.
THM, it's not a £value it's where you're inventing spurious schemes with no other intention than minimising tax liability, this only becomes viable once you've got enough money to fund the scheme and that is less than the tax, could be a small number, could be a big number depends on the complexity (and proportionally the naughtiness) of the scheme.
Simple enough answer?
Sounds like you're trying to make yourself feel better about something THM. 😉
[quote=footflaps said]
If the vehicle is specifically permitted, eg an ISA, then I don't consider that avoidance. E.g. with an ISA 'society' had deemed that the benefit of encouraging people to save outweighs the cost of loss of tax revenue.
What about a C2W bike which is purchased by someone who has one or more bikes already, with no intention of using the bike to cycle to work ?
that is a bit naughty, and plenty of people on here will say so.
although it seems the amount of moral indignation is apparently inversely proportional to the magnitude of avoidance.
dodge a hundred quid via a cheeky C2W scheme? and we all know it's a bit naughty.
dodge a few (hundred) million? and it's all perfectly legal, it's complicated, you wouldn't understand.
no I am happy with my tax issues, thanks, and have no need to feel better or otherwise. I am merely interested in the underlying assumptions behind various arguments.
FF is nice and clear. Zero tolerance. But I suspect that for many, the issue is really rather grey and the £value becomes far more of the defining issue than any underlying moral logic.
Could be wrong, as FF notes, hence the question to see what people think is the moral threshold.
What about a C2W bike which is purchased by someone who has one or more bikes already, with no intention of using the bike to cycle to work
You'd have to look at the rules (which I haven't). Are you actually required to cycle to work, I suspect not.
NB I've already got a shed full of bikes, so never bothered with it myself.
Are you actually required to cycle to work, I suspect not.
Used mainly for - so yes
Really, I though you were just baiting someone to provide you with a number so you could jump down their necks.
That 20mile commute on a DH rig* will really improve my fitness - if my company ever introduce C2W.
*actually I keep looking at London Roads in that fluo green.
dangerous to jump to conclusions stabiliser!!
But its an important question, that rarely gets answered.
anyway more fun watching the hypocrisy of our and other representatives being exposed!!
Looks like it will cost the Icelandic PM his job.
I see some classic diversion tactics are going on here...I think I can even hear some squirming of bums in seats....yes you know who you are... 😉
You're not suggesting Jamba is a friend of Panama?
I simply can't believe it.
the rich victimising the poor, re-enforces their position in society
PM of Iceland has quit.
Our PMs lucky he doesn't have any shares (in his name) in his dad's company that spent 30 years avoiding UK tax....
Interesting article kimbers, ta.
Although stripping it back to the numbers, not surprising to see that more egalitarian societies were less OK with choosing people to kill.
Are any of you buggers going to join/fund the Tax Justice Network, Oxfam, Transparency International or any of the other groups who have been criticising offshore companies for donkeys?
I don't know. Does it involve signing an Internet petition?
Dave's going to have stacks of credibility at the combating tax avoidance conference he's hosting in May.
As my gran would have said: 'his face'd stand clogging'.
The Icelandic PM didn't get to pass it off as 'a private matter' then?
Are any of you buggers going to join/fund the Tax Justice Network, Oxfam, Transparency International or any of the other groups who have been criticising offshore companies for donkeys?
Some of us have been for years.....
The Icelandic PM didn't get to pass it off as 'a private matter' then?
Only thanks to a much more involved public though (and hats off to them). No pictures of 1000s marching in Downing Street chanting "tax dodger's sons out", which is a shame. Not that you'd find a single Tory who wasn't up to something illicit to replace him with.
One imagines since we found out Dave ****ed a pig and now that Daddy's been doing business in the transparent, ethically pure democracy that is Panama, he's suddenly quite keen on the idea of privacy.
Interesting to see London property pop up in this case now as well... it's so obvious to anyone who lives in London who saw the prices shoot up very very fast in late 2013 that something crooked was going on - prices were static from 2009-mid 2013 and then suddenly around September time they went through the roof - which clearly wasn't some 'supply and demand' dynamic because demand doesn't increase 20% in 3 months without some kind of trigger.
I reckon in time we'll find out a massive tonne of crooked cash hit the market at that time as a load of these offshore companies bought into Prime London. It's not just the scale of the 'increase in demand' but the speed of it which suggests something dodgy was going on.
It's really not great that we've allowed our housing market to be corrupted like this...
[s]Stealing[/s] QE plus need to get money nicely washed in bricks and mortar => asset bubble
RT's reporting : "Nothing to see here, move along."
Stealing QE plus need to get money nicely washed in bricks and mortar => asset bubble
It's kept the bubble going, yes, but there must have been some trigger in mid-2013 to start the whole panic off. In SE26 where I was renting, the owners couldn't sell in 2011 as the market was dead. In early and mid-2013 the highest prices 2-bed flats were selling for was £250k and by September the asking (and selling) price was suddenly £300k... I swear some wall of cash must have triggered it somewhere, it was a shockingly quick increase. Maybe it was Help To Buy, but finding out all these offshore co's are wrapped up in London property isn't really a shock when you look back at what's happened to London
So apparently some big US names to be revealed that could rock the election...
Could this see Sanders into the white house, he polls well ahead of Drumpf if that were to happen and that Clown and Clinton are bound to be up in it....
Sanders after all predicted this 5 years ago
There has to be a point at which avoidance becomes objectionable - or is it simply the point just above the limit that "I" can afford?
It's about the point at which the self-delusion that under "advice" one can create 3 trusts hidden in 4 off-shore companies in the Virgin Islands and this somehow magically "transmutes" your money into something else that doesn't involve paying any of that nasty tax business whilst still living in a state that has roads, and hospitals and so on, and taking advantage of all that it offers.
It's parasitic. Is what it is.
I see that Mr Cameron has join the same tax credibility club as Mrs Hodge. Wonder how many other politicians will be sweating at moment.
quite a lot
Unlikely to be any big us names because of the way their tax system works.
London's expensive property doesn't really have a lot to do with high end corruption. Putin is not buying two bed flats in Morden.
I don't know. Does it involve signing an Internet petition?
No, it involves putting your hand in your pocket and doing more than whining on the internet. I didn't think you'd be interested.
No, it involves putting your hand in your pocket
Will they accept a cheque from my Jersey bank account?
@mefty if you had a Jersey bank account hmrc would be aware of it due to info sharing brought in by the Tories
@igm, Panama not for me professionally or personally
Icelandic PM explicitly lied about having any offshore assets. Cameron has always been open about his family trust and gave further details today.
When making Swiss account holders info known to hmrc there where all sorts of figures thrown about for how much tax would come as a result, numbers up to a billion I recall. In practice virtually nothing is due, vast majority kf funds where totally legit and fully taxed already.
By avoiding tax to the degree they are, the rich are undermining the whole principle of taxation to fund society
@binners nonthey really are not avoiding taxes to the degree you thiink they are. The biggest culrpits are businesses
London's expensive property doesn't really have a lot to do with high end corruption. Putin is not buying two bed flats in Morden.
I didn't say that - although neither of us have any idea who owns the rest of the property in our street, we just assume it's legitimate... so we'd be naive to believe that only Prime London is getting bought up by the corrupt money...
Some basics maths based on this quote from The Guardian:
More than £170bn of UK property is now held overseas. Much of that is in London, where unprecedented house price inflation has transformed homes into highly profitable investments for asset speculators. Nearly one in 10 of the 31,000 tax haven companies that own British property are linked to Mossack Fonseca.
£170bn in a City where the median salary is £35k, which allows a typical couple buying at 5 times salary to raise £350k to buy somewhere, so £170bn is the equivalent of just under half a million additional couples or nearly 1 million extra people in a city of 8.5m...
... and you don't think a wall of money like that has corrupted the market? Bearing in mind there's plenty of legit money in London property as well?
Someone rather better placed than me has already flagged this last year, which really should be uncomfortable reading for those of us who want UK to be a free and uncorrupt country and given the price rises now rippling out across the SE and further and the negative impact that's having on the wider economy (younger generation esp)
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/25/london-housing-market-launder-offshore-tax-havens ]National Crime Agency...[/url]
@deadly - seperate post to apologise for describing Ireland as primitive. A very poor choice of words.
What particuarly gets me going about Ireland (Luxembourg is worse btw) is the fact that ultra low corporation tax wasn't enough. They allowed with full knowledge and government blessing all sorts of other nonsense. Add this to when they needed a bailoit they outright refused to budge on policies which where costing the whole of Europe billions and billions in lost tax.
I do understand what a sensitive issue tax is. IMO its going to get a whole lot more combustable in the next few years with te EU slipping into another recession and the fallout from a Greek default.
@brooes Labour left a massive loophole when they put up stamp duty and neglected to close the offshore loophole. As I posted ages ago its been common for Brits to buy holiday property in Portugal via a holding company for decades, openly advertised via the estate agents. You create these anomolies when stamp duty for property is 5-10% and for buying/selling shares is 0.5% or in fact 0% in most of Europe. If you don't need a mortgage you'd be a bit nuts to pay 10% stamp duty when there was no need. Tories closed the loophole for new purchases but there is nothing they can do about deals already done.
As for 1 in 10 being done via Panama thats a small minority isn't it, ie such a dodge/strategy isn't common via Panama
@deadly I just did a site search, I cannot find the post you are referring to. Nothing comes up from me.
site:singletrackworld.com primitive jambalaya
if you had a Jersey bank account hmrc would be aware of it due to info sharing brought in by the Tories
One person I don't need tax advice from is you, it was a joke.
What particuarly gets me going about Ireland (Luxembourg is worse btw) is the fact that ultra low corporation tax wasn't enough. They allowed with full knowledge and government blessing all sorts of other nonsense. Add this to when they needed a bailoit they outright refused to budge on policies which where costing the whole of Europe billions and billions in lost tax.
They didn't change the tax law they inherited on independence from the UK to suit the US, it is hardly egregious and they gave certainty of the Irish tax consequences, which is pretty common in many jurisdictions. These structures deprive the US of tax not Europeans.
That wasn't tax advice, it was correcting an impression you where giving and pointing out the Tories have addressed idenity disclosure
Mefty Apple should be paying a lot of tax in the uk as it makes a lot of profit here, the uk is a very successful market for it. Ditto Facebook, Google etc That's how tax law should work. Bernie Saunders singled out Apple today for not paying the correct amount of tax.
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£170bn in a City where the median salary is £35k, which allows a typical couple buying at 5 times salary to raise £350k to buy somewhere, so £170bn is the equivalent of just under half a million additional couples or nearly 1 million extra people in a city of 8.5m...
Only part of that £170bn is in London. Only part of that part is in residential property. Only part of that part of that part is like having extra people in London because the huge majority will be rented out (which deflates sale prices).
Your assumptions need work.
http://europe.newsweek.com/panama-papers-who-are-real-victims-tax-avoidance-and-evasion-444144
Tax avoidance and evasion is unethical and is part of a big picture of continuing to hurt others...all a result of selfish greed.
