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ray winstone 1:13 Tue Apr 5
Tax Evasion

Perfectly acceptable if you're rich or if you're related to the Prime Minister, apart from that it's 'morally wrong'.


http://www.westhamonline.net/forum_flat.php?8376188|a0_a1_a0_a0_a0

Annony 12:28 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

I don't see this ever changing. The world would have to be united, and even if they did the rich are rich enough to club together and buy their own islands and countries. You would have to redefine the class system. Even in revolutions the rich simply up sticks to somewhere with less punitive tax regimes and let the peasants fight over what scraps that are left.

This is about the right of the rich to remain rich in perpetuity. Scrap tax avoidance and or inheritance tax and the rich will move their assets, there are plenty of tax havens and places where inheritance tax doesn't exist to entice the rich already, without making it easier for them, to our detriment.

Cameron's Ancestral 50 acre estate in Scotland was built by his great great grandfather in the 1800's and passed down through the generations. It would normally be subject to 40% Inheritance tax when passed on, I believe ownership is transferred to a complex company structure with numerous directors with minority share holdings offshore to avoid this.

overbyyer 12:21 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

The general apathy within UK society helps these things along, there will be a few stiff words from Cameron along the lines of ' this government is working hard to ensure that organisations pay their fair share of tax blah blah blah', then Osborne will come out with his mantra that 'the UK economy is doing better than any other in the EU blah blah blah'.

Then the public will lose interest and the momentum will be lost.
I'm hoping that a high profile individual will be identified, but even then, would the UK public take to the streets like the people of Iceland have?

Nurse Ratched 12:15 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Ding-ding!


THATCHER!

overbyyer 12:00 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Westside - I don't even consider it be understandable, its around the time of the original Yuppies booming in the City that these schemes were really taking off for individuals.

Id say that the Thatcher regime actively encouraged it from within.

SnarestoneIron 11:55 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

overbyyer 11:42 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

We're both complicit. Yes it is for the service provider to declare, but when we get a nice discount, we accept that price knowing what is going to happen.

Westside 11:51 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

The Tories are accused of being friends to the rich, so it's understandable (but not excusable) they didn't sort it out. Would have expected better from Labour.

Brucies_Star_Prize 11:49 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

This leak doesn't just expose morally questionable tax avoidance, it brings to light some highly criminal practices conducted by some of the world's most powerful people.

Some of the Putin transactions are clear evidence of this.

overbyyer 11:46 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Westside

If you are talking 30 years then why didn't Thatcher's government sort it out?

How far back do you want to go?

Infidel 11:44 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

winstone, acceptable to whom?

It's not acceptable to me and it's not acceptable to you, which about covers the political spectrum.

And by the way the tax evasion element of all this is trivial compared with the much bigger question: where did these people get the money from?

If there is ever a McCarthyite witch hunt for people who have fraudulently obtained their wealth you can sign me up in the front ranks and I'll gladly handcuff every one of the bastards.

Westside 11:44 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

So If Cameron's father set the trust up 30 years ago, why didn't the Blair government clamp down on it and other tax evasion schemes, during their lengthy period in office?

overbyyer 11:42 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

SnarestoneIron wrote...

Re: Tax Evasion
Don't we all avoid a little tax if we can? If I know a tradesmen personally, and I ask him to do something for me, I will pay him cash in the full knowledge that he will pocket that money and not declare it. Isn't that tax evasion on the simplest level?

But we get morally outraged if the rich do it because if probably makes little difference to their lifestyle






I think the big difference for Joe Public is that most are PAYE so get taxed at source and have to reclaim rebates months or years later if HMRC get it wrong, whereas business and rich individuals pay as little as possible via an accountant and then HMRC has to re-assess and negotiate payments months, sometimes years later. Even then the majority of recharges are deemed to be as a result of genuine mistakes or misinterpretations of tax guidance and laws, so no penalty charges are applied, so those businesses and individuals hold on to the money for longer, eventually only paying the amount they should have paid in the first place.


If you are doing well enough to employ an accountant ( tax deductible of course) then you will benefit greatly from the way the UK tax system works.




Regarding cash in hand - it's up to the person carrying out the work how the payment gets declared, not the person having the work done.
The most common scam is for tradesmen to offer a 'no VAT' discount for cash in hand payment, whereas in reality a lot aren't VAT registered, so shouldn't be charging it anyway.

, 11:30 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

These offshore facilities are set up specifically to legally avoid taxes. Whereas it seems this Panamanian company, and hence some of its clients, has blurred the dividing line between avoidance and evasion.

I cannot see anything wrong in a citizen using government set up and approved means to mitigate their tax pay. I do think though to avoid tax by means of not yet discovered or blocked loop holes is weaselly.

mashed in maryland 11:23 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

I think we should completely do away with taxes.

Slavery is much better.

SnarestoneIron 11:19 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Don't we all avoid a little tax if we can? If I know a tradesmen personally, and I ask him to do something for me, I will pay him cash in the full knowledge that he will pocket that money and not declare it. Isn't that tax evasion on the simplest level?

But we get morally outraged if the rich do it because if probably makes little difference to their lifestyle

Sven Roeder 11:02 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

In the Cameron case his investments were held in a Bermuda company and Cameron and his cronies would fly to Bermuda to have board meetings which technically means the company is being managed there.
Anyone who has worked in finance knows that this sort of stuff of people flying to Jersey etc to sign papers and hold meetings happens all the time.
Personally I think this sort of arrangement is a sham as the Bermuda base and 'control' from there is a fiction and should be struck out as not representing the facts.

The other case they brought up of Mr (not William) Hague was a simple case of someone holding an asset in a Panamanian company and pretending they had no interest in the company. The documents found revealed he in fact did control the company so the non-disclosure of the profit was just straight EVASION.
Simple win for HMRC.
They were saying large amounts of UK properties were/are owned by off-shore companies. Simple solution is to make it the law that all UK residential property can only be owned by an individual UK resident taxpayer.
Simples.

Nurse Ratched 9:47 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Sorry to disappoint you, harps, but there was a thread on here about this yesterday.

madeeasy 9:45 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Tax Evasion and Tax avoidance are the same.

Just because one is written by those powers at the top and in a tax efficient way that is clever wording so that they can say it is within the spirit of the law is a joke.

Its like they make drug dealing legal, if you do it within one of their private members clubs and write a special law for it.

Just because a company where non of the directors ever go to that country, run their business from their as a way of not paying tax. does not make it right.

It is time the UK had a real clampdown on this.

They could do it easily if they really wanted to, but as Cameron has proved, they don't as it simply affects them.

Sven Roeder 9:39 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

All members of Parliament should have all of their assets disclosed on a public register.
If you don't want to do that then don't stand for Parliament
Cameron can say what his father did was legally ok but refusing to answer whether he or his family still have funds in tax havens is unacceptable.

claretandbluedagger 8:57 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

Also fine if you happen to be the owner of the Guardian or Huffington Post...

madeeasy 8:56 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

This Prime Minister and his cabinet have made a very public outcry of stopping off shore tax havens and then the 2 faced cunt says it is a private matter when his family money get questioned about it.

He should get the book thrown at him for harbouring the activity.

I am sure that people will say what they have done is within the boundaries of the tax laws etc.

But you can not have one rule for one and one rule for the rest.

BTW just so you know I am not for either political side I also personally think that Blair should be next up in the Hague for war crimes and spend the rest of his grinning life inside.

wansteadman 8:50 Tue Apr 5
Re: Tax Evasion

I havnt had work done in my house that wasn't cash in hand, I'm sick to death of being out drinking with people who bleat about city this bankers that when they are doing all their building work for cash so the govt lose out on vat on the job and also the tax on earnings, I'd like to know how much this costs the country as I worked in the city all my life and we paid tax on every penny we earned

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