| Tax Avoidance | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 13 2015, 02:55 PM (1,377 Views) | |
| rumbaba | Feb 13 2015, 02:55 PM Post #1 |
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/20/cameron-family-tax-havens Tax avoidance is a big issue in the election campaign, so I think it is time to flag this up. Why are the Labout Party so timid about mentioning that the Cameron family fortune was made from tax fiddling schemes? The PM's Bullingdon Club fees and, if he ever burned a £50 note in front of a homeless person,were paid for from his dad advising clients on how to route their money via Geneva and Panama to avoid tax. Not to mention the tax he avoided himself - check out his estate and David's share of it. Let's deal with the ridiculous legal/illegal defence. It's like talking about 'legal highs', these schemes have one purpose and one one purpose only, to avoid paying tax and it should not be up to the tax authorities to be chasing the game. If it walks like a duck and quacks there should be a presumption of tax fraud and the onus of proof should be on the person(s) operating the scheme. It should be submitted for approval in advance, like planning permission and, until such times as it is officially approved, full tax should be paid. If, due to government cuts in HMRC , it takes 10 years to get around to approving it, fine, you can wait. I would also like to see the firms that construct and advise on these schemes prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud the Revenue. Let's see if the Daily Mail et al show the same moral outrage against wealthy tax cheats as they do against benefit cheats. Of course not, being rich is a a justification in itself. All rich people deserve to be rich and all poor people deserve to be poor, that's the current philosophy, isn't it? Wealth is created by magic, wizardry called 'entrepreneurship'. It has nothing to do with the kids in India stitching footballs or knocking out T shirts for a pittance or the hard working men and women who graft every day for companies than turn over huge profits. These captains of industry are alturists, hey, they provide jobs for people, doing them a favour, isn't it enough that their minions pay tax? So, the way forward in this brave new world is not to give anything at all to the people at the bottom, the best thing for them is to pour everything into the trough at the top and, as those up there thrust their snouts in with increasing ferocity, a bit more will trickle over the sides for the rest. That's fair isn't it? Modern capitalism, not so different from the old style, pre war, dontcha just love it? Edited by rumbaba, Feb 13 2015, 08:24 PM.
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| waiting4atickle | Feb 13 2015, 05:51 PM Post #2 |
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I'm still waiting. And looking forward to Mobs' response. |
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| caissier | Feb 13 2015, 08:25 PM Post #3 |
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I think that like insider trading and child sexual exploitation and all sorts of things, it's something that used to be turned a fatalistic eye to ..... naughtiness ...... something that just went on ...... a sort of the natural order of things ..... a sub-division of the class system. ....... and now there a mystified flapping bluster - "What's all the fuss about, er, er, er .......??" ....... and the backlash response is a desperate effort to confuse and make smoke and make wild accusations of hypocrisy. The Mail had its front page today an omnslaught on E Miliband for 'making a deed of variation' on his father's (or mother's) will as though it's a guilty tax dodging crime. "HYPOCRITE!!!" In fact (I think) it's just an amendment to the details of a will in order for the original intentions to be implemented. I had to get one done on a garage I sold recently because it was wrongly indicated on the map which went with the deeds. There's an examination of the Miliband matter which explains nothing wrong or advantageous was done - but the Mail has got it's smearing black propaganda out into the public sphere. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/12/did-ed-miliband-avoid-inheritance-tax-parents-home-deed-of-variation At the time of Miliband senior’s death in May 1994, any part of an estate worth over £150,000 left by his wife would have been taxed at 40%. By 1998, houses on the street were changing hands for £575,000, so some kind of bill was probably already looking likely four years years earlier. "A deed of variation reportedly changed his (Ralph M's) will so that Marion Miliband’s estate was reduced. Instead of leaving 100% of the house if she died, she got 60% while the brothers each received 20%. Had she retained a 100% share, and her home had one day been sold for £575,000, the IHT bill would have been £170,000; after the deed of variation the same event would have triggered a bill of £78,000. Verdict This kind of deed was often used to reduce tax bills before the new transfer rule came into effect in 2007. However, the changes in 2007 mean that a surviving spouse now inherits the tax-free sum that their partner did not use. Without the deed of variation, the beneficiaries of Marion’s estate would benefit from any of Ralph’s unused allowance as well as her allowance; with it, they will only get anything that wasn’t used. So there is no tax advantage. Frank Nash, tax partner at accountants Blick Rothenberg, says the effect of the deed is no different to that which would have been achieved if there had been a well-written will in the first place. “What the deed seems to have done is to pass the £150,000 tax-free allowance from the father directly to the children,” he says. “If the father had sat down a month earlier and written the will to do that there would have been no issue.” Edited by caissier, Feb 13 2015, 08:43 PM.
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| rumbaba | Feb 13 2015, 08:36 PM Post #4 |
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Paul Dacre is utterly odious and his vehicle, The Mail, is so far beyond the pale that it isn't even fit for toilet paper. |
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| Caro | Feb 13 2015, 09:02 PM Post #5 |
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Coincidentally we had an interview on the radio this morning about someone (Dan Davies, Senior Research Advisor at Frontline Analysts) talking about scandal in Switzerland over growing concern of the country providing a tax-haven. He said it was the only country in the world which had differentiated between tax fraud and tax avoidence and allowed people to happily avoid taxes. I found that a slightly odd statement, since here in NZ there is definitely a difference legally between tax avoidence and tax evasion (I suppose neither of these are exactly fraud) though to be honest, I don't actually know which one is which. One is bad and one is not so bad. Or one is legal and one is not. I sometimes find it odd how something which I thought was taken forgranted becomes a cause celebre - hasn't Switzerland always been known as a tax haven for the rich? But I felt the same about phone tapping by newspapers - didn't the business with Prince Charles and Camilla in earlier days show that was happening. Why wasn't there an uproar then? I thought at the time it was appalling this was allowed. Sometimes the rich don't get all the benefits and are expected to put up with things that ordinary people don't. (I haven't opened this links which come from the Guardian so am not sure where Paul Dacre fits in. I know some of the writers for the broadsheets but not for the tabloids which I don't read. Though the mailonline is hard to avoid, and sometimes quite informative.) |
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| caissier | Feb 13 2015, 09:21 PM Post #6 |
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Exactly Caro ..... for a long time the attitude has been to just shrug shoulders .... probably allied to one which thinks, "What can you do??" Yes, the phone hacking scandal was known about long before it broke into sunny uproar with everybody getting hot under the collar ..... and the police virtually refused to do anything about it. It took Milly Dowler to be horrifically raped and murdered by monster Levi Bellfield for any difference to be made and a cause celebre to emerge. Edited by caissier, Feb 13 2015, 09:24 PM.
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And looking forward to Mobs' response.
4:44 PM Jul 13