People Being Lambasted For Reducing Their Tax Burden.

[Deskdiary]

Why all the pious posturing from the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell?

Is it now a crime in this country to save money?

As it stands the people named in the Paradise Papers have done nothing wrong - they have saved money through entirely legitimate means, so bloody good luck to them.

There is not a single tax payer in the UK who, if offered a completely legitimate way to pay £50 tax rather than £100, wouldn't grasp it with both hands (if they say they wouldn't they are either liars or there's something wrong with them) so I really don't see the difference.

As is usual when we're talking about people who have so much more money than most, this boils down to jealousy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41886607

[Togo]

Good ideas again from the narrow of vision. Close all the "loopholes" etc etc blah blah. Guess what. China, Russia, Japan, go on think of your own, would immediately offer such facilities and the money would flow into their economies instead.

[Old_Geezer]

Wouldn't matter if the tax was legally owed here. No one is going to fail to take up UK investment/job opportunities, so little if any finance investment/employment would lost; but if folk wanted to move stuff around in order to pay tax in two places, that would be their choice. With closed loopholes they could pay the owed tax here and contribute to China, Russia, and/or Japan too, if they wished.

[bhg481]

Finance is a "game", just like crime, military strength etc. One side finds an advantage, the other side finds a counter-measure - repeat. In finance someone finds a loophole, government closes it, find another loophole etc.

[Old_Geezer]

...be lost...

[mikey4444]

Sqad....I don't have your faith in the infallibility of the HMRC. The reality is that very wealthy people can afford more expensive lawyers, and they make rings around our
own beleaguered tax authorities with greatest ease.

[naomi24]

OG, //it's about morality….abusing it in order to not contribute one's fair share, and leave the rest of society to pick up your slack//

Is there any suggestion that anyone who has investments overseas is not paying tax in the UK? The chances are that those people educate their children privately, have private medical insurance and take very little, if anything at all, from society. How much do you want from them and how are you picking up the slack? How much is “one’s fair share”?

[naomi24]

Mikey, //our own beleaguered tax authorities //

Beleaguered? Have they ever seen them chase people for underpayment of tax? 'Beleaguered' they're not!

[douglas9401]

While arrangements are legal, to expect folk not to use a particular device is wooly headed thinking.
Some of those exposed in the first round, mainly high profile entertainers, withdrew because not to do so would affect their ability to earn, not because the scales suddenly fell from their eyes.

[Kromovaracun]

//In finance someone finds a loophole, government closes it, find another loophole etc.//

Or, alternatively, one side tells the government how great it would be for the country to have one while slipping the governing party a gigantic campaign donation.

[mikey4444]

Naomi.....the HMRC is very good at chasing us ordinary folk, safe in the knowledge that we are not in a position to employ very expensive legal staff to fight back.

But the record of the HMRC in dealing with the Big Boys is woeful, and that is why this fraud continues.

[Old_Geezer]

There are plenty of suggestions that anyone who has investments overseas is not paying their fair share of tax in the UK. It's what the whole of the controversy is about.

[naomi24]

Mikey, //..that is why this fraud continues..//

It isn’t ‘fraud’. It’s perfectly legitimate.

OG, I’ll ask you again. What is a ‘fair share’? Would that be the same amount as you are paying?

[Togo]

It may be worth considering that the EU and the Germans in particular have long coveted the British financial sector business and World wide connections. Indeed they have spent the last 5 years trying to, firstly buy it, using very dodgy methods and the rest of the time trying to undermine or destabilise it. Now they realise that they cannot, since 2015 firstly Suddeutsch Zeitung and now this weekend Die Weld, both German Newspapers under the control of the EU once again headline leaked(stolen) documents from an anonymous "journalist". A German one. A well documented German tactic of destroying or burning everything of value in retreat if they cannot loot it and carry it away. Did you also know that Germany has been making plans, in secret, for the eventual collapse of the EU whilst publicly supporting every policy that is identified as the reason for the collapse?

[Prudie]

Whether it's fair share or not they will still be paying a good whack into the UK economy, a damn sight more than the millions not collected from those who spend years not working and on benefits.

[Khandro]

Everywhere in the world not the UK, is 'Offshore'. The UK is 'Offshore' to everyone else in the world, - that is why London is such a big financial centre.

[ToraToraTora]

bang on DD, I don't get it either. It is incumbent on us all to avoid tax, the government can change the rules if they like. The protagonists are only doing what we'd all do, even mikey, if we could.

[KARL]

Most of us are familiar with the phenomenon of some religious people being incrementally inclined toward "more and better" religious observance and then (also gradually) coming to see themselves superior to the rest. Eventually a sort of critical mass is reached whereby a form of policing starts to take place: The more strictly observant begin to exert social pressure on those who do not see things as rigidly as the "correct" ones. It is not unknown for the pressure to go beyond what can reasonably be attributed to scripture (or even well beyond that). An obvious case in point is within Muslim countries (but we see the same sort of thing, only different, within Christianity) where a dress code imposes a uniform and even rather arbitrary accusations of "insults" to the religion or its prophet become a question of life and death.

What we now have taking place in secular society in the West is a situation whereby social pressure and indignation means that complying with the law is insufficient, "moral responsibility" is held up as the reference to follow - but that is a fluid concept, just as the idea of a religion having been insulted. I am inclined to agree with those who say that envy is in there somewhere, so are the old "us and them" class divisions, and other things as well such as simply the rush of allowing oneself to be indignant (which certain sectors of the media play on). Simply because, in modern western societies, having money to spare beyond daily plus emergency needs is not something people want to be known, the money and how it is handled (onshore or offshore) becomes a dirty secret. I know a couple who very obviously are in a surplus situation (by virtue of the pensions they are known to draw, not exact numbers but easily approximated), yet they talk as if they barely know how to make ends meet. This or something like it is repeated up and down the land. I even know someone who feels this modern pressure so severely that when choosing which country to reside in he chose one with high taxation (not his own by passport) over any and all with lower taxation - my understanding is that this was to avoid the feeling of guilt.

By all means, if there is a mood for changing the law then so be it - so long as there is a choice, those who find the change(s) unacceptable will leave, those who don't want to leave will stay. But meanwhile I find the tone of indignant discussion soon becomes irritating because it invariably contains the sort of element that religious preaching does: "It simply IS a matter of right or wrong, I know the difference and They don't".

[KARL]

I should have mentioned that I really see no connection at all to the EU hierarchy - that is a separate us-and-them construct, one I also find tedious.

[KARL]

Regarding the "competition" angle, and the desire/designs others might have on British "fair play" existence: It is interesting to note that Apple, when a loophole was closed in Ireland, moved from there to..........Jersey (Paradise Papers). The offshore locations most often mentioned in both the Panama and Paradise Papers are Cayman, Virgin Islands, Bermuda, etc. - British possessions one and all. For quite a while (decades ?) the laundering of huge sums through London has been known and commented on - the UK government promotes it (non-dom licences, tax free). The UK turns a blind eye to and makes money out of the sort of thing that is the subject of the hullabaloo.

[ludwig]

// bang on DD, I don't get it either. It is incumbent on us all to avoid tax, the government can change the rules if they like. The protagonists are only doing what we'd all do, even mikey, if we could. //

I agree. The BBC had some reporter shouting 'Are you a tax dodger? That's not very funny is it?' at some member of Mrs Brown's boy's cast on their way in to work. Pretty disgraceful really.