HMRC's offices are owned offshore - Hypocrisy or what?

[venator]

It's old news, but in view of the current hoo-hah, it's worth revisiting.

They apparently did a sale and leaseback fiddle with a company in Bermuda, although the parent company seems to be registered in Guernsey. No matter.

They couldn't even do a decent fiddle, and the taxpayers are once again being taken to the cleaners.

http://www.epolitix.c...fshore-property-mess/

They need a good tax avoidance barrister.

[LazyGun]

I am not sure I see the hypocrisy. This decision was to outsource property portfolio management by the Inland Revenue back in 2001 whereas HMRC was not formed until 2005.

The vogue of managing public sector services within government at the time was to outsource all non- core activities wherever possible, essentially introducing privatisation to the public services. This is the same philosophy that brought us the wonderful world of PFIs and Managed Service Contracts, and its debateable whether they really offer anything of value to the public purse - quite the contrary, if reports about the indebtedness of some hospitals are true.

Tax avoidance is legal, and successive governments have turned a blind eye to it over the years - It is only now, in this time of recession and austerity that people are waking up to the cost that such tax avoidance schemes represent. It is only now that people are truly seeing for the first time just how little tax the corporations and some of the wealthiest individuals are paying, and hence how little they are contributing to the "all in it together" philosophy.

These offshore schemes should have been tackled years ago.

HMRC do as directed - they are civil servants. It is only recently that they have been given a budget to properly persue some of the more borderline tax avoidance schemes and bring legal proceedings against those involved.

So yes, it is ironic perhaps that the property portfolio company selected by the old IR and given such generous management terms are based offshore, and one would hope that negotiators are given stricter guidelines for the future - but not hypocritical.

Interestingly, the report you link to mentions David Hartnett, and it was this guy who apparently signed off on the deal that let Vodaphone of millions in corporation tax ; something else the public purse could do without...

[venator]

Gee whizz, lazy gun, lots of good reading there!

Many of HMRC's offices are owned offshore (sale & leaseback) The rent goes offshore. I think that constitutes hypocrisy... don't do as I do etc.

As for PFI, which Gordon Brown grasped to his bosom, this was, and is, a cynical off balance sheet fiddle to distort the government's capital expenditure figures by mortgaging future income.

It's given us vastly overpriced buildings and maintenance contracts, with financial burdens which syphon money away from the public services.

[LazyGun]

I couldnt agree with you more regarding PFIs Venator - but just remember who it was who introduced them... first PFI in the UK was introduced by John Majors government in 1992, and labour opposed them vigorously - now there is some hypocricy for you, if thats what you are looking for.

The idea of revitilising the public infrastructure off-book proved too tempting when Blair got in, and one could be forgiven for thinking that the government negotiators were either uncaring, incompetent, or corrupt.

Yet another blind eye is being turned by HMRC / Government over Managed Service Contracts within hospitals. All too often they are being used as a means of avoiding VAT on consumables, which are rolled into the lease for some capital equipment - technically, a breach of the rules, I think.