The Panama Papers.

Of course it a massive story – Dave is rich and wait for it he is the son of someone even richer who may have used some of his riches to provide for his family. SCANDAL…..RESIGN…..err, what for?

As Robert Shrimlsey neatly writes in the FT

Teams of investigative journalists who spent months ploughing through the millions of documents have now proved that the British PM’s late father, Ian, ran an offshore investment fund that seemingly did nothing illegal. Even more serious is the revelation that his father had been doing nothing seemingly illegal without his son’s involvement

😉

I think he has dodgy shares in Starbucks, given the amount of froth he has generated!!!

Grum – by voting against EU measures do you mean making it a requirement to disclose the beneficiaries of all trusts in some sort of register? That was what the government blocked, and on balance I agree with that decision. They didn’t block a move to require disclosure of beneficial interests in companies, again a good decision IMHO.

Trusts are a special feature of Anglo Saxon jurisprudence and have many important functions that simetimes require anonymity of some sort. There’s also the more practical issue that anyone can establish a trust arrangement making some sort of central repository a bit of a non starter. Anyway lots of info around on trusts for you to make up your own mind, my view is that the EU remedy was the wrong one (not to say there isn’t a better one to come up with).

PS which government changed tax law to ensure that overseas shell companies holding property were liable for tax?

getting bad media advice isn’t a crime,

Who said it was ? Well done you ailed the central issue there and did not just make something up and “defeat” that.
As for non story- hahahaha – yes course it is no one is interested and no one cares. The evidence for this is everywhere.
😆

I’m banning the word ‘whataboutery’. It’s too irritating.

which government changed tax law to ensure that overseas shell companies holding property were liable for tax?

Her Majesty’s?

julians can you ban people doing it (all the time) first please?

Because the Prime Minister concealed it.

Really ? As I said everyone knew Cameron senior created an offshore trust fund for the benefit of his family, that’s been known about since Cameron became leader.

@tmh 😀

I see the frantic whatabouterry and straw man defences are out in force, keep clutching at those straws

I must excuse myself JY but all these attacks on Cameron are fantastic ahead of the Referendum, pure genius as far as I am concerned

jambalaya you are a logical fallacy spotting wet dream. It just makes ‘debate’ utterly pointless.

whatabouterry

You can’t get round the ban by spelling it incorrectly

Her Majesty’s?

Touche and yes indeed 😀

Non dom numbers exploded under Labour at least the tories made token gesture by restricting (cough cough) them to 17 years of residency if continous. How about 5 and make that cumulative to avoid non-dons just spending a year abroad once in every 17.

Let’s imagine for a moment that all of the following problems can be linked to offshore tax havens, most of which come under the jurisdiction of the British Crown

Illicit Arms Trafficking
ISIS/Daesh
The Refugee Crisis
Human Trafficking and organized Child Abuse
Environmental Catastrophe
Climate Change and the melting of the Polar Ice Caps

Worth having a go at making a positive change?

@grum feel free to ignore me, as I posted on another thread to Cougar I’d be glad for STW to have the type of forum software the other places I frequent use which has an Ignore function – feel free to support that and then use it. All I am doing is supporting current and past Labour government stances on these matters.

If Cameron Senior had his time again he could just gift Cameron Junior all his wealth 7+ years before his death. Of course none of that would make any difference to those attacking “rich boy” Cameron

Here are the fund details

http://www.trustnetoffshore.com/Factsheets/Factsheet.aspx?fundCode=NWBH&univ=DC

http://www.sandwfunds.com/sites/default/files/FACTSHEET_DRAFTS_FUNDFACTSHEET_D1551_A_BLAIRMOREGLOBALEQUITYFUNDA_0.PDF

You need $100,000 minimum to invest but the good news is that it can be included in an ISA. I wonder if Jimmy Carr’s scheme allowed that 🙂

Of course none of that would make any difference to those attacking “rich boy” Cameron

I know, those Eurosceptic Tories, ‘kippers and media moguls would still be leading the charge, they really have no shame

Just look at the sort of malicious comments they make….

all these attacks on Cameron are fantastic ahead of the Referendum, pure genius as far as I am concerned

You’d think we had a secret police amonsgt us considering some of the comments on here…you know guys, you can criticise your leader. He won’t come and get you for subservience…IMO he”s making you look foolish – defending him for what everyone knows has been unethical, deceptive and hypocritical Prime Ministerial behaviour….

If Cameron Senior had his time again he could just gift Cameron Junior all his wealth 7+ years before his death. Of course none of that would make any difference to those attacking “rich boy” Cameron

they could try back dating the “gift”, I understand the Miliband brothers might be able to give him the benefit of their experience. If they are busy he could ask Hilary Benn

I understand the Miliband brothers might be able to give him the benefit of their experience. If they are busy he could ask Hilary Benn

might be an idea

they can probably answer more succinctly than saying

‘no, but yeah, but, no, but yeah’ for 5 days and making headlines like this……..
.
.
.
.

Also interesting:
The value of Cameron’s joint holding in Blairmore went from £12,000 at cost to £31,500 in what, just over three years? really..? What was that invested in then…? certainly wasn’t anything mainstream.

If the capital value of the shares rose so dramatically, what dividend was declared in the interim? Very little, I’d hazard, therefore there’s relatively little to declare as ‘income’. One of the best, simplest and most effective ways to avoid income tax is to convert your income into a capital gain and utilise the annual tax free allowance, entrepreneurs relief, retirement reliefs and lower rates of applicable tax as the Camerons did here.

The value of Cameron’s joint holding in Blairmore went from £12,000 at cost to £31,500 in what, just over three years? really..? What was that invested in then…? certainly wasn’t anything mainstream.

The dates are wrong he invested in 1997 which means he made a 7% capital return which was nothing special for the period.

OOh facebook going into meltdown over potential Cameron resignation. Will the british people do more than press ‘like’ and demonstrate like they did in Iceland though?

There was a lot of tutting, and a bit of head shaking.

I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed….

@kimbers: Bloody biased pro Tory press.

outofbreath – Member

@kimbers: Bloody biased pro Tory brexit press.

FTFY

at least corbs is good for something!

That’s a very big ‘oh dear’ for Osborne. Especially since he’s been very very quiet all week, hoping no-one would ask him any awkward questions about his own tax affairs. I suspect that he’s got such a bad reputation for being a game-player that we realise his absence is a tactic… hence his polling is worse than Cameron who’s deeply in the spotlight.

We do, however, need to re-direct the debate back to focus on the fact that tax-avoidance is causing a real problem to UK government and needs to be solved asap before NHS, social care, schools etc suffer too much from cuts and lack of funding (and housing because of the distortions from £170bn of foreign cash which UK wage earners simply can’t compete with) – and the big question around both Cameron and GO is whether they have personal conflicts of interest in properly dealing with tax avoidance in order to fund our public services.
If they do have conflicts of interest then are they suitable to push for the required legislation?
This is more important IMO than the simple facts about whether they have offshore finances or not

The shadow chancellor must have scored a lot of “Who?” responses 🙂

It’s interesting to me, the way leaders are deposed in the penultimate act before moving into opposition. Thatcher replaced by Major, Blair by Brown and now Dave by “The Next Fall Guy”.

The push might be a bit earlier than expected! Although they don’t seem to have old fashioned good grace anymore do they!

I don’t think Cameron will be pushed out: who would want to take over a split Tory party 3 months before a dirty referendum? Far better to wait until after the referendum: even if the Leavers lose, the campaign will damage Cameron.

IF he leaves surely a pro EU candidate has to lead the govt given its stated position??? Any know for sure – Genuine question that.

I assume even the tories can see the cluster **** / omnishambles of a leadership election in the middle of an EU vote with a split party and will just sit and wait. He is going anyway and leading them now woudl be like herding cats for any candidate.

I don’t think Cameron will be pushed out: who would want to take over a split Tory party 3 months before a dirty referendum? Far better to wait until after the referendum: even if the Leavers lose, the campaign will damage Cameron.

This. Everyone will want him to stay on until the referendum.

I’d have thought that he and his potential replacements would want him to stay on as long as possible afterwards too, accumulating all the blame for the inevitable difficult decisions and rendering his replacement as un-tarnished as possible right before the election.

Unless he loses the referendum in which case he’ll have to go right away.

ZERO chance of a Cameron resignation, simply no need or grounds for one. EDIT plus the political pragmatics as above

All this is good for Corbyn though as no one is asking him about the Scottish elections, not yet anyway.

By the way there is no way the shares open market value (if such a thing even existed) is £30k as the annual income was £19k

Yes @big_n_daft nothing like backdating the will of a dead person is there ?

@mefty (from a while back) yup changubg tax treatment would be a significant piece of work but imho well worth it fir the billions and billions lost. My view current tax franework is simply “not fit for purpose”

Cameron will not be pushed out and he will not lose the referendum.

^ sadly this is probably correct – its going to be close though 😉

My view current tax franework is simply “not fit for purpose”

Absent international co-operation, there is nothing you can do without walking away from our existing treaties which would devast the economy, we would be removing ourselves from the world economy.

mefty – Member
Cameron will not be pushed out and he will not lose the referendum.

yeah he wont be pushed out, hes just made a huge PR balls up of this and his legacy will be that of ‘Offshore Dave’ henceforth

as for the referndum, who knows? piss up and brewery spring to mind, he doesnt even have Gordon Brown to save his bacon on this one!

Absent international co-operation, there is nothing you can do

That’s my view.

So much of the ‘rich person’ tax avoidance (the kind the papers care about) boils down to ‘living somewhere else’, or ‘having your company somewhere else’.

In the free world you can’t stop people moving about and you can’t stop firms headquartering somewhere with a competitive tax regime.

If there was a world government you could impose consistent tax everywhere and the problem goes away.

@mefty I think we can sort the EU stuff in very short order after a Brexit – truth is (imo) Germans/French etc would be very much on our side. Personally I think we should get on with it before the US takes all the money (even if politicians don’t change the game activist investors will likely force Apple to repatriate, pay tax and then dividend out)

There is still something very odd about this story. It’s essentially a non-story – so why (other than most people can’t be bothered to understand/simply don’t understand the issues) has it become one? Forget protecting his dad, why would Dave make such a clumsy hash of dealing with this?

Either he has suddenly become totally incompetent at PR or there is a little bit more behind this story. On balance, I am siding with the latter as there is not alternative reason why this has been blown up to this extent.

All pretty odd.

Thx for the R4 link

Mefty +1

well fonseca is only the 4th largest such company in the world, whats he got stashed in the others?

at least its distracted from the complete alienation the government have achieved with the staff of the NHS, the EU leaflet pigs ear, the U-turn on baseline tests for toddlers and their Tata steel failures

actually THM is possibly agreeing with JHJ there ^^^

There isn’t any EU stuff of much significance.

Why would Germany, a huge exporter be in favour to transferring the majority of taxing rights to the country of sale thus depriving it of a substantial part of their tax base – what planet are you on?