The Panama Papers.

Imagine how fast the laws would change if all the disgusting plebs starting doing it, your wages payed to an off-shore holding company.

Except PAYE is designed to prevent it and is not optional for most. Effectively your employer is a government tax collection agent, they even get to pay for the accounting process, hence why they (large employers/gang masters) for the most part are in the inner circle and get treated with kid gloves.

I predict, in typical British being seen to be doing something style, small time tax evaders will be publically hammered, while it will be business as usual for the old boys.

I reckon you’re bang on there. They hope.

This mob have made a lot of noise about combatting tax avoidance, but have actually DONE pretty much **** all! Apart from some headline grabbing token gestures.

But this is the least of Dave’s worries. What’s also going to come out here, as all this info is digested, is the enormous sums of dirty money making its way, via Panama, into The City and the ridiculous London property market.all that money that those Tory Party diners haven’t been asking any questions about. Would anyone seriously believe that The City is any more ethical than Panama? Or that they just wear better suits?

A British Virgin Island Registered Business is £1000, you probably don’t need much property or money to make a saving.

The only reason average Jo doesn’t take advantage is because the advisors wont get out of bed for less than 5% of 100k.

But everyone has a conflict of interest

Not everyone has engaged in tax avoidance. I have never done anything

Secondly it is pretty hard to think of anyone more tarnished than Dave hence your “we all do it appeal”.
We dont and even if we do his family are the Olympians of tax avoidance

Your “defence” is a weak attack on everyone else rather a defence of his probity

Not everyone has engaged in tax avoidance. I have never done anything

Pension? Cycle to work scheme? ISA?

No. No and No

Arms for terror? Afghan Opium? Romanian kids?

Yes, Yes and Yes
But only because the Queen ordered me to and she controls everything, everyone knows that 😉

Excellent, can probably get you a tidy job in government… can you wear a suit and talk guff?

Play down the Queen thing though, it’s probably best not too many folk get wise to that 😉

I am disappointed that,after all these years, you need to ask about my ability to talk guff
I can wear a suit but I look like I have a court appearance to go to.

@mefty no reply as surprise surprise I have had better things to do. The fact is Apple dodges taxes everywhere, if it paid corporate tax in the US (40% I believe vs our 25%) that would be one thing but it doesn’t. It pays pretty much zero everywhere. I would change the law to make them pay tax in the UK on UK sales and the associated very large profits, that would require us to be outside the EU as there is very little we can do presently under EU rules. If faced with a choice of paying UK tax at 25% or US taxes at 40% I think you’d find them willing and able to pay UK tax on UK sales and profits.

Imagine how fast the laws would change if all the disgusting plebs starting doing it, your wages payed to an off-shore holding company.

@chester

“What price for cash ?” Cash in hand plumbers, electricians, odd jobs, builders, car repairs etc

Anyone who has setup and runs a business enjoys substantial tax benefits vs those who work PAYE, so are the business people tax evaders ?

In my view people here are really missing the point. We have in full view billions and billions of tax being evaded by companies in full view year in year out and its getting worse and we are doing nothing about it allowing companies to play off one government (be that Ireland, Luxembourg etc) against others to deprive everyone of the taxesa that should be paid.

At least today Obama stood up and stopped the tax inversion Pfizer was doing with a much smaller Irish company. These are 100% tax avoidance deals where Pfizer moves its hq to Ireland in order to avoid US taxes.

I understand people are angry at what they believe is “rampant” tax evasion by “the rich” but imho its a drop in the very large ocean of coporate tax evasion.

Inheritance tax, “reprehensable” to avoid by setting up an offshore trust but “salt of the earth” if the money or assets are gifted 7 years or more before death ?

This debate is completely along political lines, people are ignorin the scale of evasion right in front of their eyes with their vision clouded by what they suspect is going on behind closed doors.
.

that would require us to be outside the EU as there is very little we can do presently under EU rules

Does Jamby want to leave the EU? I cannot tell but he seems to be subtly dropping in anti EU lines to every single post he makes about anything

Anyone who has setup and runs a business enjoys substantial tax benefits vs those who work PAYE, so are the business people tax evaders ?

No.

I understand people are angry at what they believe is “rampant” tax evasion by “the rich” but imho its a drop in the very large ocean of coporate tax evasion

Shirley corporate tax avoidance and tax havens are all part of the same issue

I can see no one saying that they are happy with that, there have been many threads about the subject on here

Just last month…..
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/googles-tax-bill

The concern is that a PM who has gained immeasurably from his father actively stashing cash off shore, whilst hammering the least well off in society is gonna do sweet fanny adams about it

Not everyone has engaged in tax avoidance. I have never done anything

Pension? Cycle to work scheme? ISA?[/quote]

Pensions aren’t tax avoidance, they are tax deffering, you get taxed when you take the income (although currently 25% can be taken tax free, although I don’t expect that to last).

EDIT to my above post:

EDIT: This along with your Ireland/Luxembourg (which I assume you add in for some kind of perceived “balance”) obsession, is another one you continuously drop into threads. You realise how much less of this goes on these days don’t you? In fact, IIRC, the UK’s “black” economy is the lowest in the OECD. Of course, the “black” economy is not solely down to the tradespeople who seem to be on your hate-radar.

Personally, I have not been paid in cash for…I dunno, I can’t actually remember…I do get offered it sometimes though – in an attempt to get me to give a discount for evading tax – all at my risk of course. 🙂

To give an example, I’m currently working on a massive site – judging from the car park, there must be 100-ish various different guys and girls on site. All of them, not directly employed by their contractor will have a flat 20% deducted from their invoices under CIS and will have to ask the tax man for any overpaid tax back at the end of the year – because that is how a large section of the construction community works these days. That’s how approx 90% of my invoices are paid every year.

Of course, there is always the argument that a mixed market economy such as we have, needs a bit of “black” cash flowing around – to grease the cogs, so to speak. I’m not sure of the rights and wrongs of that myself, but there you go. A guy down the pub told me while I was buying a round – paid for by card, as I hadn’t taken any cash that week.

Pension? Cycle to work scheme? ISA?

Instruments for their intended purpose. Next!

Next!

I dunno, I imagine he’ll say the same thing again on the next page.

Even if the bike isn’t used to cycle to work ?

One bloke on here has bought 4 bikes on the C2W scheme. Piss take or prefectly legit ?

Even if the bike isn’t used to cycle to work ?

Then the instrument is not being used for its intended purpose.

Instruments for their intended purpose. Next!

Avoiding tax. Exactly.

So it’s the EU to the rescue…
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/06/britain-under-pressure-opposition-tax-haven-blacklist

Avoiding tax. Exactly.

Well, no. The HMRC has never required me to disclose details of my workplace pension.

Pension? Cycle to work scheme? ISA?

Are people who earn under the personal allowance Tax Avoiders too?

The concern is that a PM who has gained immeasurably from his father actively stashing cash off shore, whilst hammering the least well off in society is gonna do sweet fanny adams about it

I see what you did there, and approve

Well, no. The HMRC has never required me to disclose details of my workplace pension.

Probably because your work declare it all for you. As to how joined up it all is, no idea.

I would change the law to make them pay tax in the UK on UK sales and the associated very large profits, that would require us to be outside the EU as there is very little we can do presently under EU rules.

Jolly good, what about all those tedious Double Tax Conventions that impose exactly the same obligations on us thus taking away your ability to do this? You probably want to rip those up and destroy one of the most internationalist economies in the world. That is the fundamental problem with many Brexiters, they don’t understand our other international obligations.

On evasion vs avoidance, evasion requires there to be a lack of disclosure, i.e. if the taxing authority was aware then you would have been taxed.

Avoidance is very difficult to define. Whilst the term is defined for specific provisions of tax law, there is no overarching legal term of art. What I would say is that it is all very well saying it is what was intended, how do you judge that other than through the law itself. For every tax avoider, there is your innocent trader whose tax inspector gets the wrong end of the stick and who, if he/she is given too much power can bankrupt that trader even when no at fault. This happens – giving too many powers to tax inspectors has similar civil liberty issues to the ones that get all the media attention.

On Cameron, just a few points:

(i) It is not a trust it is a company;
(ii) It is not a private fund for the Camerons, his father was a money manager who looked after other people’s money;
(iii) there is substanitial anti avoidance law for offshore funds of this type and whilst initially when set up it would have had significant advantages, many will have gone in the interim;
(iv) it was transferred to Dublin in 2012 when Smith and Williamson it under their wing and it became a UCITS for EU directive purposes.
(v) All this has been known and in the public domain for years.

mefty don’t go coming on here with your so called facts – what is the rabbit pitch fork wielding mob supposed to do now? You’ll be telling us that the multi-millionaire previous leader of the Labour party engaged in some interesting property tax planning next…

(i) It is not a trust it is a company;
(ii) It is not a private fund for the Camerons, his father was a money manager who looked after other people’s money;
(iii) there is substanitial anti avoidance law for offshore funds of this type and whilst initially when set up it would have had significant advantages, many will have gone in the interim;
(iv) it was transferred to Dublin in 2012 when Smith and Williamson it under their wing and it became a UCITS for EU directive purposes.
(v) All this has been known and in the public domain for years.

i) no ones said its a trust (apart from jambs)
ii) so camerons inheritence was simply profit from a man who helped people avoid paying UK tax
iii) and how much tax was denied to HMRC?
iv) as the company’s own internal doccuments show (see the telegraph) it was moved to Dublin because they knew it would be a problem for cameron jr, once he was PM
v) while its known that Ian cameron had >than 10k offshore in Jersey, some of which dave inherited, it wasnt known how much he had in Panama

rabbit pitch fork

For dubble da laydeeez

(i) Someone else alluded to it.
(ii) Perhaps, without knwing who the investors were we have no idea;
(iii) See ii
(iv) It says a source close to the company, no documentary evidence and it conflicts with the info here
(v) We know a will was registered in Jersey, no information on beneficiaries, and certainly no information on how much he has invested in his managed fund in Panama (actually the Bahamas for residence purposes) if anything.

I was thinking more

So the take home is that no one knows who his dad helped stash money for, how much they might have hidden from hmrc, why it was moved to Ireland, or how much of it benefited our PM because it’s all kept secret from the electorate, and the taxman….

You forgot the bit about possible links to Embezzlement and Asset stripping of a successful company as a means of consolidating control of the Arms trade by a shadowy international cabal.

Seriously, just read this (non fiction) book, it’s only a couple of quid:

In the Public Interest: A Devastating Account of the Thatcher Government’s Involvement in the Covert Arms Trade

Bear in mind it details the same methods and players (BAE and Midland Bank (later HSBC)) as mentioned in relation to the Carroll Trust, which is alleged to have involved Blairmore:

Further sources have revealed that Gerald Carroll’s Farnborough Aerospace Aerospace Centre in Hampshire England was “targeted” by BAE Systems and HSBC International within the framework of a systematic break-up embezzlement operation

Fair bit about Arms to Iraq and Al-Yamamah in there too…

Probably because your work declare it all for you. As to how joined up it all is, no idea.

That was my point, really. Systems are set up to administer and monitor instruments being used for their intended purpose. It’s very different from the disclosure requirements under DOTAS, where the HMRC is seeking to establish if the tax avoidance is contrary to the intention of the legislation. As Gary Barlow would tell you…

Avoiding tax. Exactly.

Wrong.

Tax relief on pensions, savings and C2W are schemes designed by the government to use the tax regime in an attempt to influence behaviour. The govt is at liberty to do this – exactly the same as tax on cigarettes and alcohol (and the rest of the Oasis back catalogue) but in the opposite direction.

Entirely different from registering a company operating primarily in the UK somewhere other than the UK to avoid incurring tax payable by companies registered in the UK. There is no government scheme for this.

Arguments like “it’s all tax avoidance, there’s no difference” are reductive, wilfully simplistic and serve only to allow those who aren’t playing by the rules to wriggle off the hook. I couldn’t care less about pop stars or actors or whatever, but the fact that the very same people given the responsibility of ensuring adherence to tax rules have themselves benefited – and in many cases are still benefiting – from deliberate avoidance or transgression of those rules is outrageous.

David Cameron intervened personally to prevent offshore trusts from being dragged into an EU-wide crackdown on tax avoidance, it has emerged.

In a 2013 letter to the then president of the European council, Herman Van Rompuy, the prime minister said that trusts should not automatically be subject to the same transparency requirements as companies.

The EU planned to shine a light on the dealings of offshore bodies by publishing a central register of their ultimate owners but, in a letter unearthed by the Financial Times that remains publicly available on the government’s website, Cameron said: “It is clearly important we recognise the important differences between companies and trusts … This means that the solution for addressing the potential misuse of companies – such as central public registries – may well not be appropriate generally.”

Judith Sargentini, a Dutch MEP who led the European parliament’s work on the draft law, told the Financial Times that the UK’s argument against a crackdown on trusts was that it would be an invasion of privacy – and that trusts have a special role in Britain in helping families manage issues around inheritance.

“I saw it [the British position] as a danger and a possible loophole,” Sargentini

Cameron intervenes to prevent EU making offshore trusts more transparent