The Panama Papers.

Cameron was obliged to declare stuff but didn’t but it isn’t illegal because it was only some kind of professional obligation rather than a law. Will let’s tear up all the rules concerning the behaviour of MPs because if there are no laws to back them up they are pointless.

He wasn’t there is a £70,000 threshold.

More than £70 000! FFS. So why isn’t he suing all the media who said he was obliged to declare?

Edit, and that implies the total investment was over £200 000. Do both conditions i. and ii. have to be met? All that is as clear as mud. And what’s to stop you having multiple £30 000 investments. Rules made for the boys by the boys.

So why isn’t he suing all the media who said he was obliged to declare?

I imagine he has got better things to do and it would only keep the story going.

Just saying ‘I pay a lot of tax’ is disingenuous, to say the least.

‘I don’t fraudulently claim the majority of my benefits’

Edukator – where are you getting the £200K investment from?

Binners the Tories are not systematically dismantling the welfare state, what they are doing is reigning in its uncontrolled and unaffordable expansion. If they (we) don’t do that in very short order the whole country is going to have a very big problem which will impact those at the bottom the hardest and much harder than they are being impacted today. Labour’s strategy of investing our way out of the deficit was and remains pie in the sky. Labour did pretty much nothing about tax evasion in their 13 years and the number of non-doms exploded under their rule, they increased stamp duty on property without taking the blindingly obvious step of closing the offshore loophole. Remember at the GE the Tories trumped Labour’s extra £2bn for the NHS by promising the £8bn the NHS was asking for.

As we’ve said this Panama debate has become totally political – its not about facts or numbers or obeying the law its about trying to score media points against “rich Tories”

@Edukator Small world indeed, we where in Newcastle initially in Gateshead, as my father worked for BHP’s steel business. We went out in 66 on an Italian boat Castelle Felice – your relations may well have taken the same boat

its not about facts

😆

@grum Franky Boyle makes a very good point. Two comments (edit and well played 😀 )

1) We should have regular forensic tax audits on everybody – French and US do and the Australians have some innovative techniques like comparing your income to your assets/lifestyle and seeing what income you decalred on tour mortgage application
2) Instead of focusing so much energy on what we think is being hidden we should deal with the hundreds of billions in taxes being legally avoided via tech, internet and other companies

This second point really shows this is an envy driven debate – folk here are very happy o buy from internet sellers avoiding uk taxes and drstroying uk small business but work themselves into a frenzy over Tory MPs taxes

Binners the Tories are not systematically dismantling the welfare state, what they are doing is reigning in its uncontrolled and unaffordable expansion.

By effectively ending social housing, thus forcing everyone into the the private rented sector, thus sending the housing benefit bill into the stratosphere?

Is that the kind of ‘reigning in its uncontrolled and unaffordable expansion’ they had in mind?

The more cynical might suggest they’re just ‘reigning in its uncontrolled and unaffordable expansion’ that G4S, Capita, Serco, or people with private rented property portfolios can’t make a handsome taxpayer-funded profit out of.

Like disabled people. They’re shit for generating revenue. The useless ****s!!!

Give up Binners. This is what you’re up against.

Don’t give up Binners please, the comedy value is excellent. In tact are you Frankie Boyle??

It either comedy gold or bare-faced cheek (hypocrisy?) to include in the same post that

The Tories are dismantling the welfare state
Income inequality has increase massively after the state

…and then accuse Jamba of talking bollocks

I think I will go for comedy gold – a bit edgy and rude (like Boyle) – but ironically amusing at the same time

Don’t stop please….

By effectively ending social housing, thus forcing everyone into the the private rented sector, thus sending the housing benefit bill into the stratosphere?

Yes, but then there is a nice straightforward pipeline from tax-payers to rental property owners. Result!!

I think I’ve sussed out the true identity of the Jammmyhurtmore axis of right wing nutterdom..

…. and I claim my food bank voucher and benefits sanction 😆

There are import duty dodgers on STW but as many who are happy to pay the tax, see. The threshold for declaring is £80 rather than £70 000.

When MSP referred to down in the cesspool on that thread, that’s where Cameron is.

I was a little miffed at the amount of import duty I had to pay on a guitar neck, but only because they’d taxed me on the American sales tax – a tax on a tax.

You forget the picture of the dining club, common keep up.

But nice consistency. Just call people nutters, the sign of a lost debate – resort to insults.

But you are ok – rules allow nut jobs, nutters etc

How are you getting on with your answers Dr?

Cmon you can definitely do better than that….don’t let the standards slip

So, the man who wants to be PM cannot:

i) use the right form
ii) fill it in online
Iii) return it on time
iv) find where he put it

The man who is actually PM left his child in the pub.

Have you stopped beating your wife, th?

For the benefit of anyone who may have taken that last post seriously,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

And only works when there has to be a yes/no answer.

So 0/10.

tl;dr thread, but looks like a right chuckle 😀

Anyway, I’ll chuck this one in…

“Taxation is legalised extortion” – Edward Troup quote from 1999, HMRC boss looking into the Panama papers, being quoted in the press currently.

😉

… but, let’s look at the context: https://fullfact.org/economy/taxation-legalised-extortion-discuss/

“Tax law does not codify some Platonic set of tax-raising principles. Taxation is legalised extortion and is valid only to the extent of the law. Tax avoidance is not paying less tax than you ‘should’. Tax avoidance is paying less tax than Parliament would have wanted. Avoidance is where Parliament got it wrong, or didn’t foresee all possible combinations of circumstance. The problem of tax avoidance is reduced to the problem of finding an answer to the question of what parliament intended and making sure that this is complied with. I would not pretend this is a simple task. But recognising this as the issue and dealing with it equitably and constitutionally would be a significant step on the way to tackling avoidance effectively.”

Okay, the original article was actually about how to handle avoidance, but there’s some lovely ones in there that I agree with / can use in my defence 😀 (I’m not an aggressive tax avoider. I do however seek to minimise my tax bill within the law 😉 ).

Simply that reinforces you are not obliged to pay as much tax as possible (as Lord Clyde c.1929 also said), and that avoidance is a problem of law which I’ve said all along. If the government doesn’t like it, plug the holes or make whatever you think is immoral simply illegal (or rather what Joe Public and the press get their nickers in a twist about being immoral. Immoral is just a point of view, not a point of law).

Things are all a bit Sheriff of Nottingham these days, but on a more global scale…

If the quote is true DD, he was probably mis-quoting Robert Nozick the libertarian philosopher who had entertaining debates with John Rawls. In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick argued

“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Some persons find this claim obviously true: taking the earnings of n hours labor is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another’s purpose. Others find the claim absurd. But even these, if they object to forced labor, would oppose forcing unemployed hippies to work for the benefit of the needy. And they would also object to forcing each person to work five extra hours each week for the benefit of the needy…

Even if you don’t agree, it and the debates with Rawls are fascinating reading.

I’m going to go out on a limb here Hurty, and suggest that you probably also find the theories of Ayn Rand ‘fascinating’, as opposed to the insane ramblings of an absolute maniac

teamhurtmore – Member
-shrugs-

I find all types of philosophy interesting (with econ and politics) binners, even did a Havard course on-line a few years back. My old man was taught Rawls when he was at Harvard in the 70s and I was intrigued by the debates. Having said that I have never read Rand, indeed the last time you asked I had to google to find out who Rand was 😳

You know only too well where I come for the insane rankings of an absolute maniac

To dismiss two of the most prominent US political philosophers of the 20C out of hand would be shame, although I understand fully why you might choose to do so.

although I understand fully why you might choose to do so.

Ooooh. Sneaky little slap there. 8)

You going to take that shit, Binners?

I’m not dismissing it at all. Far from it. I’m fundamentally objecting to its core principles, and seeing it as essentially dehumanising, and frankly dangerous, as it legitimises and promotes sociopathic behaviors.

Just have a look at the people who regularly trot Rand out as an influence. And see if any wouldn’t personify the term Ultra Right Wing Nut-job?

You TEACH economics and didn’t know who the leading light of the neo-liberal movement was?

Basically the a-hole in whose name all this shit is happening?

Even I know and I’m scarcely clitoris, liqourice, licklespit, read and write-y

pwned

You TEACH economics and didn’t know who the leading light of the neo-liberal movement was?

What the left think is mainstream thinking on the right and what is – certainly in this country – are not the same thing.

What the left think is mainstream thinking on the right and what is – certainly in this country – are not the same thing.

It’s just basic general knowledge. 😆

You TEACH economics and didn’t know who the leading light of the neo-liberal movement was?

In limited self defence, this was a few years ago and I did include the 😳 😉

Basically the a-hole in whose name all this shit is happening?

I see. Despite my ignorance and lack of reading here, I seriously doubt that a Neo-liberal wold have been promoting excess levels of leverage being built up across all sectors, massive manipulation of financial markets (central bankers, regulators, bankers etc) etc

I must have a read, it will be a unique perspective from that school.

Even I know and I’m scarcely clitoris, liqourice, licklespit, read and write-y

You did well to hide it then.

Bins I will drop an email to Harvard and suggest that take reading Nozick off the syllabus. That’s a very perceptive conclusion without having read any of his stuff though. Chapeau as they say!

Good to see so many people of one persuasion having intimate knowledge of the workings of a Neo-liberal A-hole.

I must have studied the (British) tax system at really bad time. The first tutorial was on “what constitutes a fair tax system?”. By the end of the course we had all been brainwashed into thinking that a fair tax must be “progressive and based on the ability to pay”. That wealth as well as income should be taxed and income from wealth should be taxed the most as it involved in no loss of human capital (part of your life). The brainwashing must have been effective because economists and philosophers have come and gone but I remain convinced.

One economist, Thomas Piketty, has taken into account everything I learned and much of what I’ve observed in this world and made sense of it. It’s sad that even when politicians agree with him (François Hollande) they don’t have the courage of their convictions and submit to all the grab, grab, grab, me, me, me lobby groups.

😀

I think we’re actually in agreement on something Hurty. I know it does happen from time to time. We don’t have neoliberal capitalism. Far from it. We have a bastardised form of corporatism that picks and chooses the bits of free-market ideology advantageous to the elite, and bollocks to the rest of it! i.e.: bank bailouts where they suddeny reverted to socialism. State supported socialism for the few anyway. The normal abject horror at the very notion of state support, or daring to interfere with the all-knowing, all-powerful ‘Market soon returned where every other industry was concerned

Truly the worst of both worlds!

And I’ve not read Nozick, but I will. Where would be a good place to start? I personally think the neoliberal ramblings of Rand and the likes of Milton Friedman to represent a world view mired in the grip of insanity

It does indeed happen and preferably to recent niggle IMO

Nozick’s is quite hard work IME. Even as someone who is broadly sympathetic to libertarian ideas, I have only read part of Anarchy… And largely in the context of his debates with Rawls, which personally, I find very interesting

http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Reader-Michael-J-Sandel/dp/0195335120

This reader has two readings from Nozick (and your friend Milton but no Rand 😉 ) and is a bloody good book as are Sandals accompanying book on “Justice- what is the the right thing to do?” and his podcasts. Ch 8 focuses on moral aspects of redistribution, but you would hate Ch 3 (Friedmann, Nozick and Hayek!!). Unfortunately his explanation on his views on tax are in Ch 3 😉

You wont like his conclusion but the logic does challenge assumptions the are too easily taken for granted and as a (clearly v bad economist) I like the interplay between ethics and labour theory.

No links to Friedmans critique of “equality of outcome” required!!!!

You’re way behind the times guys.

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