Tax avoidance and Jimmy Carr

We're all in this together????????........not if you are a pensioner with an occupational pension and about to reach 65 your personal tax allowance is frozen (ie reduced). If the government were as quick to close tax loopholes as they are in reducing benefits and tax allowances for pensioners then I would be a happy bunny but as ever there seems to be one law for the rich and one for the rest of us. In this together.........not!

I agree that deliberate tax avoidance, particularly on this grand scale is morally abhorrent. I am sure it was done on JC's accountant's advice...so how many accountants also pay less tax due to good knowledge of avoidance loopholes?
JC is responsible and has to face the flak BUT it must be going on all over the place and I think that naming a well known individual is simply a headline grabbing political strategy by Cameroon and not very praiseworthy!

If he had discovered that a John Smith, who was not a public figure, had been doing the same thing for years he would not have named him as no headlines made! Cameroon also chose to name JC rather than recent OBE and overt Tory supporter Gary Barlow who i gather used the same system!!

Until the government eliminates these loopholes, I think DC is very wrong to point the finger at one person. JC is not doing anything illegal,and I wonder how many others are taking advantage of this loophole. Name and shame them all, not just one!

Better still close the loophole!!

Carr is a nasty, nasty man! We once, way back, saw him on stage by accident (at Hay Festival - what were they thinking?) and he was crude beyond anything you could imagine - I thought I'd jumped into another universe - and incredibly sexist and cruel. Its possible to be rude, crude even, without being cruel. The man is evil, there is no other word.

Didn't know who he was until I Googled him! (I live a sheltered life!)

I liked 8 out of 10 cats at first, but then they started using 'celebrities' who were totally unfunny and I agree that much of the humour is cruel. I still like Mock the Week though and of course there is always the wonderful Have I got News for You.

How many MPs etc have tucked their money away off shore - people in glass houses- is this the next can of worms to open?

Could it be a diversionary tactic?

He's just one - how are they going to catch up with the rest. We plebs are the ones that fill up the coffers and woe betide if we deviate from the straight and narrow. We for certain will be found out!

PS. and ofcourse the wealthy have the ways and means to employ an accountant to to advise on avoidance tactics.

The public who go to his shows obviously live and work and probably py their taxes to this scheming (man of the people!) who wants it all for himself
pity he is so popular.....his greedy and no where near the man he entertains....

It seems that Cameron is regretting his indiscreet words about Jimmy Carr as he is now being asked about Gary Barlow, who is a friend of his.

fingers crossed there will be more 'foot in mouth' moments.. I like a laugh!

Tax avoidance is unacceptable - but I do think politicians should keep out of these sorts of moral judgements - especially as it may come back to bite them! They lay themselves open to to close scrutiny of their morals in tax affairs and may wish they had kept their mouth shut!

Can't stand Jimmy Carr, but it seems wrong to just name him - when there are 10000s doing the same- and of course most of them vote Tory.

Jimmy Carr was using a legal, but little known, tax reduction scheme. So, why apologise for doing something legal. The point is why are we not doing it as well ? Is it only the rich that have these schemes available to them. ? How many other rich people are doing it, not Jimmy alone, I would guess. I do not suppose Jimmy apologised when he bought his big house. If 'Call me Dave' is going to 'out ' Jimmy then we must know the names of all the other rich people using this scheme. A few politicians as well I would guess! Sylvia

I think he was right to apologise. Yes, it may have been legal, but salting over 3 million pounds of earnings away without paying any tax cannot be judged to be reasonable by anyone's standards. If he can participate in charity events like Red Nose Day and Comoc Relief, he will be well aware of the necessity and benefits of bringing in taxes, and he has criticised banks for the 1% scams that he himself has been involved with.

However, he has said that he'll now find out if he can take it as much as he has dished it out. I think he can. It will be fun watching

I heard on the radio that DC's father in law does something similar.

Apparently The Times has a list of prominent people that do it. (flipping firewall! hmm)

This is why I think it is crazy to have too high a tax rate for the super-rich. You will lose out in the end through tax avoidance schemes.

This story is not so much about tax avoidance as about hypocrisy,on the part of both Carr and Cameron. It is their sheer stupidity that amazes me.

Yeah. But it's about the tax avoidance too. They shouldn't get off that lightly.

If your accountant, if you could afford one, said there was a perfectly legal way of paying less tax what would you do? And spot the difference: gary barlow, Tory supporter and Cameron pal, gets OBE; Sir Philip Green, Tory supporter and I would suspect Tory backer, gets knighthood and a job; Jimmy Carr, leftie, gets called morally wrong.
Multi-nationals including Vodaphone and Goldman Sachs also agreed deals with HMRC over their creative accounting so paying less tax.
If the Tories have the political will to bring in a pasty tax and impose the swingeing benefit and pension cuts, they can find the political will to close all the tax avoidance schemes.
The amount lost in tax avoidance massively outweighs the amount falsely claimed in benefits.

David - have you followed the Private Eye long-running saga of the dodgy deal done by Dave Hartnett (head honcho of HMRC) with Vodophone and others? I am hoping the Serious Fraud Office will step in, but it has not been very effective so far.
I can never understand why people get so angry about benefit fraud and yet seem quite complacent about tax avoidance schemes.

Poor Jimmy Carr! I can't help but feel very sorry for him. Tax avoidance is legal and anyone can do it and I for one am happy to own up to knowing full well that if I were in his shoes - earning all that lovely dosh - I'd have done exactly the same thing. He is not the only person trying to hang on to what he's earned - why all the vitriol? Do I detect a few sour grapes? Anyway, to give him his due, and to salute him, he's apologised and promised to act more responsibly in the future. Perhaps he's started a trend. Personally I'm trying to earn more money by the rent a room scheme, and adding solar panels to my roof - both of these schemes earn money which is tax free. I'd hate to have my photo plastered all over the dailies with the misunderstanding that I'm a tax dodger and have done something shameful and illegal.

To repeat - it is not the fact that Carr took advantage of a legal loophole, but that he made a joke about a bank doing just that. People in glass houses.....