Tax Havens

Excellent idea daphnedil if you want to strangle all human effort and enterprise. The economy would nosedive so fast that we'd be looking to Greece for handouts! Thank God you're not the real Chancellor. Actually that might be the only reason I'd vote SNP as it would mean that England had even worse economic strategists than Scotland which is virtually unimaginable!

Good point Jane if earning wealth and saving are no longer acceptable then the economy is on a downward spiral. I do sometimes wonder if all the things we have done to save for our retirement and help our children mean that we have been mugs. Maybe we should have been drinking, driving expensive cars, having lots of holidays and generally having a great time so the state can look after us.

I don't believe in elaborate estate planning to avoid Inheritance Tax, and I believe that as far as possible we should pay for our own care in later life. But for the life of me (by then the death of me) I can't see why any residue should not pass to my children and grandchildren, after IT has been paid.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/04/12/christian-aid-slams-eu-country-by-country-reporting-proposals/

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/04/12/caroline-lucas-demands-country-by-country-reporting/

Good for the Green party and Plaid Cymru.

pogs Just a couple of points.

If inheritance tax was abolished then presumably the government would have a hole. Opt/out tax is not something possible within the UK tax system, and would make planning for the future quite difficult. The government would either have to make more cuts or find an alternative revenue stream.

I think your idea of class warfare is a tad dated, as is the suggestion that the left is somehow jealous of someone's wealth, quite a few people who support left wing ideology are vastly wealthy. What a large body of opinion in the country is concerned with and it is by no means restricted to left wing parties, is the fact that at the moment the tax system is not deemed to be fair. That is all that is wanted so hardly a revolutionary thought.

Of course Cameron was going to get it in the neck, the left and right wing press saw to that, both with different agendas , but nevertheless inevitable. The circus will move on, but some mud will stick, just ask Corbyn, Milliband and Major they are all victims of the same thing whether deemed fair or not, and we know that the press is never about fairness.

My concern as a voter and democrat is that there is clearly a gap between the stakeholders (the tax payers) and the extremely wealthy who appear to be buying political clout throughout the world without feeling the need or desire to have any stake in the society in the form of tax.

grumppa- just how we feel- and yes, AFTER due tax is paid.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/04/12/we-have-a-right-to-know-who-is-committed-to-the-politics-of-jealousy-and-who-to-accountability/

This is Richard Murphy's take on Alan Duncan's statements. Alan Duncan is committed to the politics of jealousy. Otherwise he would not have said what he did.

Interesting that the Telegraph complains that Corbyn hasn't paid anything like as much tax as Cameron and Osborne.
One of the reasons they paid so much is because they have grace and favour houses and can take rent from letting out their own.
Should they not pay spare room tax on their Downing Street homes? After all, they are the equivalent of council houses.
I hope someone asks them.

However, why shouldn't people pay for their own end of life care?
Well, yes, precisely my argument.
And the private sector is subsidising those unable to pay for their care home. However, people may get rid of much more of their money if they thought that the Government would take anything left when they died - and possibly leave themselves short of enough to pay for the amount of care they may need.

The majority of people work hard for themselves and their families, not for the good of the state; the amount of tax they pay throughout their working lives is their contribution to the nation. Many give substantial sums to charities too.

Taking any surplus that someone has earned and died before they can spend it is grave-robbing.

Well, surprise, surprise- fancy that!

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I do like their wallpaper and paints- but ....

I don't own enough to pay IT - and any party which proposed taking the whole surplus from every person who dies would be unelectable anyway.

grumppa has expressed it better than me

I may have bought some of their wallpaper many years ago, but am glad to say that we have not used wallpaper in 30 years
(all painted walls)

Not a surprise to me, granjura. I think I put a similar link before.
Cameron said that it's the sort of company we should be encouraging. I'm surprised nobody took him up on that.

Jalima, lots of people who do offshore also give money to charities, and expect praise for it. I'd rather they gave it to the taxman, so we didn't need to have foodbanks, etc., in this country. Then our charitable donations could go to developing countries.

It is simply not believable that this company has run at a loss for so long and not become bankrupt. Ask any of the grans on here who own a business whether they could have survived for so long running at a loss, of course not. If I was a revenue officer I would investigate forthwith - oh better be a bit careful though as my boss owns some of it.

Durhamjen

Your link Murphy is part headed ' We have a right to know who is committed to the politics of jealousy'

Another post of yours , quite fairly, refers to Alan Duncan who as you state said " We risk seeing a House of Commons which is stuffed full of low achievers, who hate enterprise, hate people who look after their own family and know absolutely nothing about the outside world".

Now I think he was a total ass in the the way he sounded so pompous but I think he was cack-handedly trying to make a point that for some people there appears to be such much hatred of wealth , public school education that they do not believe anybody of wealth, good education, aspiration belong in the Commons.

Then I read your post on the 'What's so special about a rich MP' where you said "Nothing special about a rich MP. They are 10 a penny at the moment. That's why we need to 'get rid of them' and make parliament more representative.

I am sure you and I and other posters will not agree but I find your last view makes Duncan's crass attempt at sarcasm rather convincing.

Have you read the link, POGS?

What about the other part of it?

" Politicians choose to put themselves in the public eye. They choose the resulting publicity. And they should accept the resulting obligation to be accountable. If they do not, then it is my very simple and straightforward suggestion that they are not the appropriate people to be making decisions on our behalf.

We do expect to be governed by people who accept responsibility for their actions. And we do expect them to tell us the truth. What is more, we do believe they should act without conflicts of interest. We have this expectation in business. We have it even when it comes down to the level of being a school governor. So why should we not expect our politicians to be accountable for the risks that their private financial affairs might create in the exercise of their judgement?

Alan Duncan is just wrong: he is revealing his commitment to the politics of jealousy. Those who are making this demand are revealing their commitment to the politics of accountability. The two are based upon very different sentiments, and deliver very different outcomes, and we have a right to know who is committed to each."

I agree.

Nonnie People paying into occupational pensions have no control over where their money is invested and, in any event, most people (myself included) have a limited understanding of the complexity of fund management and pensions - and fund managers and financial institutions like it that way as they have in many cases been taking enormous commissions that are "hidden" within the figures. It is ridiculous to compare people who quite openly hold ISAs and pensions - as encouraged by the government - to people who hide their money away in tax havens or who use all sorts of devious schemes to avoid paying tax.

I find it unbelievable that some people continue to characterise those who are seriously fed up with the underhandedness and sheer greed of very wealthy individuals and companies who avoid paying taxes as being "jealous", "envious", etc. etc. I am sure there are many very comfortably off people on Gransnet who deplore these aggressive tax avoidance measures not because they are "envious" but because they think they are deceitful, unfair and just plain wrong. Many people In the Labour Party are extremely critical of Tony Blair and other Labour so-called "modernisers" who tend towards Peter Mandelson's intense relaxation about the filthy rich (though he did add "as long as they pay their taxes"). They would be equally as critical of any past or current Labour MPs who are revealed to have used similar tactics to avoid paying tax.

POGS In saying that you are not a "green eyed monster", you are again using the age old put down of implying that those who support inheritance tax - or any other attempt to distribute wealth more fairly - do so because they are envious. It's not an argument, it's an assumption based on your own rather jaundiced view of people on the left of the political spectrum.

To illustrate why you oppose inheritance tax you cite the example of a person known to you whose estate attracted inheritance tax because he owned a house worth £250,000 and had received compensation for a serious illness. First of all, inheritance tax was previously only payable on an estate worth more than £325,000 (£700,000 per married couple) and now £500,000 (£1,000,000 per married couple). Secondly, inheritance tax is only payable on the amount that exceeds the threshold, at a rate of 40%. Personally, I think it might be better to substantially reduce the threshold but also to have a sliding scale of rates, starting at, say, 5-10% and rising to, say, 25-30%. Our own house is worth in excess of £500,000 and we would most certainly want our children to benefit from some of that money but I think £325,000 is more than enough. Around 35% of people in this country do not own their homes (and this is the lowest percentage for 25 years) but at the same time the beneficiaries of the relatively small number of estates (around 6%) which attract inheritance tax continue to amass fortunes for themselves and their own children. So a system whereby wealth, power and influence is held in the hands of a very small number of people is perpetuated.

What I do think is a "shit tax" as you put it, is VAT, which is paid at a rate of 20% across the board - whether you have an income of next to nothing or whether you are a billionaire.

Headline in the Metro today:

"Corbyn the tax bodger", together with the comment "the unfortunate Labour leader yesterday became the first top UK politician to be caught doing anything wrong since the scandal over offshore tax havens broke".

He did nothing dishonest or underhand. He filed his tax return late and duly paid the £100 fine. Does that constitute doing something "wrong"? How amazing that in the light of all the revelations re tax avoidance, once again Corbyn is the villain of the piece.

Yes, poor choice of word 'bodger' is not really appropriate but probably chosen as it rhymes with 'dodger' which of course is false, inaccurate and would have been libellous.

A better description would be to say he had 'botched' the filing of his tax returns by returning them late and therefore incurring a fine. This is more a case of bungling, mismanagement of time, an informal mess up, hash, making a pig's ear of things than any dishonesty.

Though I'd worry that these traits are not something to be cherished in a future PM

So, Cameron paid all his tax and Corbyn paid his eventually , neither did anything wrong then.......?

Forgetting your own child and leaving her alone in a pub is OK

Oh right..... Had to think hard there for a few seconds, what a memory you have!
So, nothing doing on the tax avoidance front, Cameron is now being judged variously as too arrogant ( hanging offence) and he and his family once forgot a child at a family meal out .This is getting 'seriously' funny.

pogs you consistently miss the point. By letting your focus dwell on what you perceive incorrectly as jealously you are missing the real problem which I will reiterate by making the same point above. It is not the wealth that a large body of opinion in the UK is worried about, but what is being done with it. The wealthy are buying into the political system and thereby gaining influence outside of the democratic system. Through this they have to date ensured an extremely easy ride in relation to both evasion and aggressive tax avoidance.

When giving thought to the tax system itself what the stakeholders in the UK want is fairness and the perception is that it isn't. You have only got to give thought to how you feel about the inheritance tax to understand this. Middle income people in particular are beginning to feel more and more that the tax burden falls heavier on them, and the poor through benefit cuts feel they are being more targeted then people at the upper income scale. It is nothing to do with jealousy, and everything to do with fairness. Now of course it is possible that we are all wrong, that all earnings are declared for tax purposes and everyone has the same % stake with regard to tax as everyone else. But the argument is that this is patently not the case. The onus is on the government to prove otherwise.