Tax avoidance and evasion is unethical and is part of a big picture of continuing to hurt others...all a result of selfish greed.
I always thought the cycle to work scheme was an evil plot to hurt others.
I hope you all feel ashamed of yourselves.
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18521468 ]Shall we let Dave take us back to a more innocent time?[/url]
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Some wisdom from your link binners
Labour leader Ed Miliband said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality. "I think what the politicians need to do is - if the wrong thing is happening - change the law to prevent that tax avoidance happening."
John 8:7 indeed
Stones anyone?
Among the squirming yesterday, CMD made the astonishing comment that he owns no shares. Really? Dividend income is one of the few areas where you can legitimately earn a return these days. And this guy is running the country???? Very odd....he will be depriving his kids of the quality of education that he enjoyed next.
didn't CMD say he's publicize his tax return some years ago?
I don't think he did, did he?
if the wrong thing is happening - change the law to prevent that tax avoidance happening."
long term, admirable goal. Short term, people need to feel the law breathing down their necks, chuck some high profile avoiders and evaders in the nick for a long time, and make the others feel that the risks "if" you get found using one of these schemes as not worth it.
Of course he doesn't own any shares, Uncle Huberts ex-wife's hamster has a special purpose vehicle in Luxembourg that administers a trust fund in the Turks and Cacos that owns all Dave's shares.
But its alright cos he bought his own bike (with money he stole out of an orphanages collection box).
Very odd....he will be depriving his kids of the quality of education that he enjoyed next.
[url= http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/poor-multimillionaire-david-cameron-is-worried-his-children-will-struggle-to-get-on-the-property-ladder--Z1w4nr512l ]He clearly shares your concerns THM[/url]
As I read that, and I heard the sound of satire breathing its last breath, as it lay slowly bleeding to death in a gutter
...people need to feel the law breathing down their necks, chuck some high profile avoiders...
Are people being deliberately thick here?
Avoiding tax is legal, encouraged by the state and everyone does it.
Avoiding tax is legal, encouraged by the state and everyone does it.
I think you're deliberately conflating different things. No-one could reasonably believe that using an instrument for its intended purpose (say a workplace pension) is the same as exploiting a legal loophole.
[i]Avoiding tax is legal, encouraged by the state and everyone does it. [/i]
Er, it's legal becuse the people with power to change the law are the one's benefiting from it the most.
In other countries it's legal to rape your wife, does that make it right?
Laws and ethics and right from wrong are very grey areas..
It's unethical...so no, people are not being thick. I suggest you are being naive if you think simply because it's legal makes it right..
I think you're deliberately conflating different things. No-one could reasonably believe that using an instrument for its intended purpose (say a workplace pension) is the same as exploiting a legal loophole.
Stick to the term evasion then. Avoidance is explicitly legal.
No he's right Ransos, I pay KPMG to offshore my childcare vouchers, they're currently being used as seed funding to set up a shell company to launder drugs money and I'll receive a spiffing return.
Avoiding tax is legal, encouraged by the state and everyone does it.
anyone who thinks that an ISA is "more or less" the same thing as an off-shore trust managed by a hidden company benefiting a local bishop in the Indian Ocean is being obtuse.
it's fraud in all but name, and every-one who takes "advice" to do it knows it is.
Stabiliser - I'm afraid you're behind the curve old chap. Selling arms to ISIS is providing me with a much higher return than the drug dealers are managing.
Ironically those upstanding citizens like Daves dads will have been using the services of the same lawyers and bankers who were more than happy to launder money for the cartels. I don't know where that leaves the war on drugs?
binns - another quality source, thank you. He's right there though isn't he?
CH4 news reported his promise re tax returns last night - another silly knee jerk comment from a politician. Perhaps we can make HRMC open access to all - and charge a fiver a look to earn some extra dosh for the Treasury.
don't worry folks - apparently we can re-colonise these havens and teach them how to behave properly. Some nice chap said so on the news last night. 😉
Avoidance is explicitly legal.
No, that's not correct. HMRC can and do challenge tax avoidance schemes. It's odd that they've never wanted to investigate my childcare vouchers...
That wasn't tax advice, it was correcting an impression you where giving and pointing out the Tories have addressed idenity disclosure
As with most of your so-called corrections you were wrong, the latest Tax Information Exchange Agreement came into force in 2009 when I think you will find Gordon Brown was PM. (EDIT: It is fair to say that reporting obligations have been beefed up considerably under the present government.)
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.
It makes a lot of sales here, but should its profit be entirely attributed to its sale effort? Whilst there are some who think there is nothing special about their software, many who buy their products seem to think there is, so an awful lot of their profit should be attributed to the countries that create it - and that is not the UK; likewise the hardware development.
Almost all of these US multinationals that are hoarding cash offshore do so as a result of cost sharing agreements of activities that generate valuable intellectual property. However, the actual activity is predominately taking place in the US so that is the country that is being deprived - so Bernie is right there.
another silly knee jerk comment from a politician. Perhaps we can make HRMC open access to all
you seem miss the point.
CMD has said in the past that he's happy to make public his tax affairs and then did not, why is that?
CMD has said in the past that he finds tax avoidance "morally wrong" and we discover that his dad was knee deep in these schemes, and that CMD doesn't or will not benefit...hmmm, I think most people are thinking "yeah, right"
if he said so, then he should do it true - just think its a silly idea since where does it stop? Like most sound bite politics (strategic industry) sound great but rarely hold up to scrutiny.
I think yea right too - like the stuff about not owning shares. His trousers are well and truly at half mast
so the stone throwers who don't engage in any form of avoidance (and boycott companies who do) can legitimately form an orderly queue and take aim
Almost as shocking as finding out that Dave has been the beneficiary of industrial scal tax avoidance, is the earth shattering revelation that the new head of FIFA has had some involvement too
In other news... apparently George Michael is gay?!!!! 😯
So are we all boycotting pro footie competitions now? Sport riddled from top-to-toe, it would be morally reprehensible to support such stuff surely.....
These clubs will be owned by shady foreigners next? 😉
So are we all boycotting pro footie competitions now? Sport riddled from top-to-toe, it would be morally reprehensible to support such stuff surely.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
teamhurtmore - Member
So are we all boycotting pro footie competitions now? Sport riddled from top-to-toe, it would be morally reprehensible to support such stuff surely.....These clubs will be owned by shady foreigners next?
ive already done that
According to the beeb, Osborne just terminated an interview, when asked about his having any offshore funds....
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you know, I think that's the answer. keep all the dodgy ****ers tied up with running sports, it will keep them out of politics (can you imagine if Sepp was running a country?) keep them occupied, and feed their megalomania, and ultimately as it's sport...It doesn't matter.
everyone's a winner (although it's sports, so maybe not...)
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you own a football team? were Mossack Fonseca any good?
you know, I think that's the answer. keep all the dodgy **** tied up with [s]running sports[/s] politics, it will keep them out of business (can you imagine if George was running a company?) keep them occupied, and feed their megalomania, and ultimately as it's politics...It doesn't matter.
FTFY
As I said @mefty we can agree to disagree, the uk is leading the way in tax disclosure - see extract from Guardian below. Yup the majority of Apple's profts should be attributed to the point of sale. Design/manufacturing is the minority imo. The fact is they are paying virtually zero tax everywhere.60% of global profits booked and sheltered from tax through Ireland and the industrial scale tax avoidance that is the European Union where Luxembourg is the richest country per capita in the EU.
@tmh from what I infer Cameron is taking no income from the trusts currently nor since he was PM. I would imagine he'll take income when he retires from Parliament in 2020. As I posted before I don't see a furore over Ronnie Corbets inheritance tax planning ? He sold his home in 2003 and gave the money to his kids thus IHT is zero. Many of us here have argued IHT should be abolished as its a tax only the middle classes pay (£4.6bn this year).
Quote below from Guardian today, Obhama was elected in 2009 and promised to address tax avoidance, yet he has done pretty much zero and as I posted Apple has dodged $80 billion in global taxes during his preseidency and Facebook, Google, Amazon etc are doing the same. Note the comment from the Swiss lawyer about how US states like Wyoming have enacted secrecy laws to attract funds.
[i]Soon after he took office in 2009, Obama outlined plans to crack down on offshore tax havens and return more than $200bn in unpaid taxes to the US. “I want to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world. But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens,” he said. However, eight years on little has changed and indeed the US itself has emerged as a popular venue for tax avoidance.
The US states of Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota have been promoted as new hot markets to avoid tax and stash cash secretly, because the US has been resisting international disclosure reforms. Last year the Tax Justice Network, an activist research group, ranked the US third in its annual financial secrecy index, citing its “wide array of secrecy and tax-free facilities for non-residents”.
“How ironic – no, how perverse – that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” Peter Cotorceanu, a lawyer at the Swiss law firm Anaford AG said in a recent legal journal, according to Bloomberg. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.”[/i]
By all means abolish UK dependency tax havens, funds and business will flow elsewhere. Tax receipts will fall as unemployment will rise in those places. But hey ho we'll have the moral high-ground eh ? As Obama says you need global action as unless everyone agrees the business will just move, the chances of global agreement are close to zeo imho. See thenquote above innthenUS you have one state playing off aganst the other.
We have much greater tax issues like Apple etc and internet
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...
Pfff, bloody conspiracy theorists!!
Unless...
Revealed: the tycoons and world leaders who built secret UK property empires
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/05/panama-papers-world-leaders-tycoons-secret-property-empires?CMP=fb_gu ]The Panama Papers show how billions of pounds of offshore cash flooded the British property market[/url]
Transparency campaigners have warned the secrecy of such arrangements can enable large sums of black money to be laundered through the property market. A senior National Crime Agency director warned last year that the capital’s housing market had been “skewed by laundered money”.
HMRC can and do challenge tax avoidance schemes.
Only to make sure they aren't evasion.
Avoiding tax is by definition legal.
According to the beeb, Osborne just terminated an interview, when asked about his having any offshore funds....
I've not really been following this either on here or in the news as I've been busy. It would strike me though that this could be as big as the expenses scandal, the main difference being that it's largely a tory problem. At least I hope so 🙂
Will Cameron even last to the referendum?
Will Cameron even last to the referendum?
Why wouldn't he? Not to defend him but he's not responsible for what his dad did.
As long as you count Blair as a Tory, which he pretty much is !
All this reminds me of a mega long thread on the contractoruk forum where a bunch of contractors used a "tax planning" scheme which had foreign exchange deals/loans etc etc going on. I think they were effectively being taxed at 3%, eventually HMRC caught up with the scheme and deemed it an evasion vehicle.
The contractors are still fighting the case I believe, but what were they thinking of entering into such a scheme initially. £££££££ greed.
the main difference being that it's largely a tory problem
Oh I don't know. I wouldn't be remotely surprised to see you-know-who's name pop up....
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Trying to find a positive spin in all this... Offshore has been being used to launder money for longer than I've been alive - I've always assumed this kind of stuff was going on and assumed everyone else knew about it to... but now corruption is becoming a really big thing... so what;s changed? Is it?
a) the amount of it is so massively off the scale, so widespread and so blatant that people are now getting angry?
b) the economic crisis is making us all realise we're not as comfortably off as we thought we were, and so we're more angry that other people are scamming us that we would be if we though we had enough
c) email, mobile and internet make it much easier for records to exist of dodgy dealings, much easier for them to be leaked and therefore much easier for prosecutors or journalists to build their case... there was a guy on Radio 4 the other night made reference to 'radical transparency' which suggests it's that much harder now for dodgy dealings to be kept secret. In which case, we can expect more and more stuff to keep coming out around all kinds of corruption for a few more years yet...
I believe there were rumours about Mark Thatcher for years, but the amount of pressure put on Maggie as a result wasn't as great as the amount of pressure being put (rightly IMO) on Cameron. So I'm wondering what's different this time?
<edit> I have it on good authority (my parents) that grass-roots Tory activists were talking about the need to get rid of Osborne and Cameron well before all this came out... they're both seen as liabilities... so I suspect there's some very serious plans now being drawn up in Westminster to replace him - this will be a massive massive gift to those who want to get rid, even if he does talk his way out of it in the short term
I believe there were rumours about Mark Thatcher for years, but the amount of pressure put on Maggie as a result wasn't as great as the amount of pressure being put (rightly IMO) on Cameron. So I'm wondering what's different this time?
Guess in many respects it's cumulative... not only have we had the expenses scandal, the Phone Hacking Scandal (don't forget how close Andy Coulson was to Cameron and how close Murdoch still is), the Snowden revelations where it was proven the Government was lying outright, we also have more details of how the Government armed and supported Saddam (mention of Mark Thatcher relevant there, as is John Bredenkamp, who I mentioned earlier in the thread) and intentionally or otherwise, led to the rise of Al-Qaeda (the Al-Yamamah deal involving Thatcher likely to be very relevant in that context). On top of that, you have the security services protecting MPs who were abusing children, whilst Special Branch was fully aware.
Oh, and don't forget the tax payer had to pay for Maggie's fancy pants funeral!
Could it be a case of we're getting sufficient points of reference to build a bigger picture?
Only to make sure they aren't evasion.Avoiding tax is by definition legal.
That's not true: HMRC can take you to a tax tribunal and give you a large bill plus penalties, without any suggestion of criminal activity. That's one of the reasons why you are required to disclose certain schemes.
I think it's because people in western democracies are now waking up to the [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35890784 ]40 years of hurt[/url]
Whilst the corruption went on in the boom years from the 90's to 2008 no one cared as the perception was that they were getting richer (I had no such illusions as my pay started flat-lining ca 2004).
So the stock market keeps rising, indicating more wealth, but only for the wealthy.
FTSE 100 barely changed over past 10 years, so how does that idea work?
[i]Why wouldn't he? Not to defend him but he's not responsible for what his dad did. [/i]
Well, Cameron is where he is today as a result of his Dad's money. Also, Cameron would have been influencing policy whilst his Dad was alive. Therefore you cannot seperate them with the simplistic statement you made above.
Why wouldn't he?
Because mud sticks, irrespective of whether that's fair or not. A politician's power and position is a direct function of the confidence voters have in them. Cameron is already wounded from the budget, IDS, and Europe. This could quite easily tip him over the edge even before the fatal blow that the referendum could deliver. With the expenses scandal, the damage was less about the detail, and more about a public perception that they are all on the take, and this has exactly the same ring to it.
Example:
This is how it works. Let’s say a corporation picks and packs a container-load of bananas in Ecuador, and it costs the company $1,000. It sells them to a French supermarket for $3,000. Which country gets to tax the $2,000 profit – France, Ecuador? The answer is, “Where the multinational’s accountants decide.”
The multinational sets up three companies, all of which it owns: EcuadorCo, HavenCo (in a zero-tax haven) and FranceCo. EcuadorCo sells the container to HavenCo for $1,000, and HavenCo sells it on to FranceCo for $3,000. That’s basically it. (The bananas themselves don’t go anywhere near the tax haven: this is all just paper-shuffling in New York or London.)
If you blinked, you may have missed what happened here. It cost EcuadorCo $1,000 to pick and pack the container, and they sold it on for $1,000. So EcuadorCo records zero profits, meaning no taxes. Likewise, FranceCo buys it for $3,000 and sells it to the supermarket for $3,000. Again, no profits, and no taxes. HavenCo is the key to the puzzle. It bought the container for $1,000 and sold it for $3,000 – a $2,000 profit. But it is based in a haven, so it pays no tax. In short, all the profits have been stripped out of France and Ecuador, and shovelled into the haven. Hey presto!
What it doesn't say is that the money to buy the banana was provided by a african government official who gets a salary of 10k a year but skims half a million from grants intended to improve the life of residents. He/She then uses another company in his daughters name to buy up flats in Islington and send his son to a private school who becomes a politician, defends tax havens and retires as a exec director of a investment business.
Private Eye interactive map of offshore owned property
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/mobi/registry
Had Ed been PM (or even David, remember them ?) then he would have some questions to answer.
