Panama Papers

[LadyDeliah]

Tax avoidance is legal because the people making the laws set the laws up in that way so they and their friends can benefit.

If I made the laws, it would all be illegal, we would have a 4 day week and martial arts would be on the national curriculum :-)

[Earl Aelfheah]

LadyDeliah has my vote!

[uncleglen]

The trouble with having martial arts on the curriculum is that ALL the kids- good and bad- will be enabled...i.e. tooled-up

A 4 day week would mean more immigrants to fill the job vacancies (because as we all have been led to believe, the indigenous are lazy sods and will not do the 'menial' jobs), and the population would expand at a faster rate than it is now.

I agree about tax avoidance though. But there are people who have no social conscience. A colleague who was a regular church-goer, took full advantage of dodgy dealings going on when the docklands area was re-developed and managed to get herself and her kids a nice little property portfolio. Also, another person I know used to illegally bypass her electricity meter at evenings and weekends and was shown how to do it by an electrician employed by the met police....the only way to stop these leeches is to have massive sanctions as a deterrent.

[LondonMix]

??? I get that some people see avoidance as immoral and David Cameron from his previous statements positioned himself as one of them.

But has David Cameron avoided tax? From what I've read, his inheritance was below the inheritance tax threshold and the capital gain he made when he sold out of it was also below the capital gain threshold. If he is being honest and doesn't hold any investments in offshore structures now or never has besides what he got in his fathers will which he subsequently liquidated, I'm not sure he can be accused of anything.

Can you explain what you think he did wrong? Is it that he didn't sell his inheritance vehicle immediately even though not doing so made no difference to how much tax was owed? Or is it that his father may have been avoiding tax so he can't claim to find tax avoidance bad?

rahrahrah Wrote:

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> Cameron was very vocal on Jimmy Carr's tax

> avoidance. I believe he called it 'immoral'. He?s

> been exulting everyone not to avoid tax and yet he

> himself has held shares in a company which seems

> to have been set up with the purpose of doing

> exactly this.

> @Londonmix - I think it's obvious why some feel

> that using off shore companies to hide income and

> avoid tax (opportunities which are certainly not

> open to all) is at odds with the notion of

> everyone being in 'it' (deficit reduction)

> together.

[ed_pete]

Be clear about Avoidance and Evasion. I have an ISA therefore I am avoiding but not evading tax.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27372841

[Earl Aelfheah]

To be fair, this government has done more to crack down on avoidance than New Labour ever did. I don't think the Blairmore thing would have been much of a story had Cameron not (a) been so vocal on the ills of tax avoidance and (b) just given a single, straight forward statement on it all in the first place.

[LondonMix]

Me too. Also, I contribute into my pension and am again avoiding tax.

As I've said before, aggressive avoidance is legally the same as evasion in many jurisdictions so its important not to conflate the two ideas.

ed_pete Wrote:

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> Be clear about Avoidance and Evasion. I have an

> ISA therefore I am avoiding but not evading tax.

>

> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27372841

[LondonMix]

I agree a single straight forward answer would have been better. That was a political misjudgment. If he'd said, I inherited an offshore vehicle as part of my inheritance but never used it to avoid any taxes myself and no longer own it, he'd have been much better off. He may not wanted to have thrown his father under the bus or simply been daft enough to think it would blow over without full disclosure.

You are right they have done a lot more to crack down evasion. My brother in-law works for HMRC. Also, they have reduced some legal means of avoidance such as dramatically shrinking pension tax relief for higher earnings.

rahrahrah Wrote:

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> To be fair, this government has done more to crack

> down on avoidance than New Labour ever did. I

> don't think the Blairmore thing would have been

> much of a story had Cameron not (a) been so vocal

> on the ills of tax avoidance and (b) just given a

> single, straight forward statement on it all in

> the first place.

[DulwichFox]

Talk on Twitter that David Cameron should Resign..

Do people here think he should... ?

I think he needs to seriously concider his position...

DulwichFox

[LondonMix]

Are people saying he should resign because he wasn't immediately forthcoming or because he inherited an offshore fund even though he himself didn't avoid any taxes and liquidated it 6 years ago?

[Jeremy]

Much as I dislike Cameron, I don't think this is resignation territory.

[Loz]

This, from one of the polling people, is probably the best summary of the situation...

The key question is what do you now know about David Cameron that you didn?t know three or five days ago. And I think the answer to that is very little. You knew he was privileged. You knew that he was sensitive about being from a privileged background, but also a lot of people trusted him to manage the economy and run the country because he?s the best out there. And I don?t think anything that has happened this week has changed any of that.

If you don?t like David Cameron because you think he?s posh and doesn?t get you, then this week will not have changed that. But if you think that it is good that you have a prime minister running the country who has come from a good background, has received a good education, looks the part, acts the part, runs the country relatively well, similarly nothing that has happened this week will have changed that either.

[????]

DulwichFox Wrote:

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> Talk on Twitter that David Cameron should

> Resign..

>

> Do people here think he should... ?

>

> I think he needs to seriously concider his

> position...

>

> DulwichFox

It's twitter - it's full of idiots who believe or are promoting the one way propaganda of social media co they hate the Tories. He's made a mess of this communications wise which his enemies are jumping on but it's really no different to Ed Milliband's dad leaving his house in trust to avoid tax. The people I am beginning to hate the most are the angry middle classes of social media who don't even want to understand understand this at all, they don't even know the difference between avoidance and evasion (see also debt and deficit). Thick, angry privileged twats themselves largely.

[Jeremy]

Not exactly an impartial summary, Loz...

[????]

Take Ken Livingstone - on Russia TV saying David Cameron should be arrested. That's Russian TV, Putin's PRAVDA - i bet he didn't mention Putin once. That's Ken Livingstone who channeled his considerable earnings through company shells to pay an effective tax rate of under 20% (yeah, some socialist) and Ken Livingstone whose companies were prosecuted twice for tax evasion. I know where I think the more unpleasant, the thickos and dupes are on the political scale.

[Loz]

Jeremy Wrote:

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> Not exactly an impartial summary, Loz...

It is actually. It just wasn't very clearly written, so it takes a couple of reads.

What he's saying is that those that voted Tory last time around did it knowing who Cameron was and the events of this week haven't changed that knowledge much. And those that didn't vote Tory last time around also did it knowing who Cameron was and the events of this week haven't changed that either.

I mean, who would have been surprised if Cameron didn't have some money involved in this sort of thing at some stage in his life?

[Earl Aelfheah]

livingstine is a bell end. I think where Cameron deserves to be criticised is in relation to his hypocacy (berating others who have been involved in similar schemes) and for his evasive and frankly weasely response to initial questions.

That account Liz is very partial / partisan in the sense that it takes as read that Cameron is the best person to be trusted with running things. That's a matter of opinion and not a matter of fact.

[Blah Blah]

I don't think Cameron will resign, but I think it strengthens Boris Johnson's cause for a leadership challenge after the EU referendum results are in. Whatever we, the public, are left thinking by all of this, we need to remember that there is a subtle movement growing within the Tory party to unseat both Cameron and Osborne, and all this plays into the hands of the usurpers. I don't know if Cameron would survive a leadership challenge or not, but it's usually the beginning of the end for a leader when a challenge comes.

[uncleglen]

I was not surprised when this hit the headlines...it was his father that started the BlairMoore company and I feel it is in the same realms of blaming a person because his/her parents sent him/her to public school at the age of 5....I've always preferred Tory politicians in government because they are well off and privileged and they are therefore not bogged down in the politics of envy like many Labour politicians. Labour politicians seem to have the attitude that 'we are all in it together', yeah- down in the depths of poverty and despair, instead of aiming for something a lot better.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The idea that we should aspire to a more equal society is not 'the politics of envy'. Many affluent people and many on the right as well as the left will share that vision. If you want a society that is productive, cohesive, secure and successful, you do need to ensure that levels of inequality don't get out of control. Tony Benn came from an extremely privileged background, but believed in social democracy.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Btw, I don't really think the story is about what Cameron's father did. It's the fact that he hasn't been upfront about the interests he had in Blairmore, he didn't declare them and he was extremely evasive when asked about them. Put in the context of his public moralising over such schemes and personal criticism of others with similar interests and I think he has fairly opened himself to accusations of hypocrisy.

[Loz]

rahrahrah Wrote:

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> That account Liz is very partial / partisan in the sense that it takes as read that Cameron is the

> best person to be trusted with running things.

Except it does not assert that at all. Read it again.

[Earl Aelfheah]

You're right Loz. It does take a couple of readings though. That said I disagree with it still. There are plenty of pro Cameron voters who will have been dismayed by his handling of the situation.

[Blah Blah]

I agree with rahrah. The politics of envy are not the sole preserve of the poor or the left and many Labour MPs have also come from affluent backgrounds, gone through public school etc. There just isn't that division of background/ wealth in parliament and never has been. Even people like Wilson went to grammar schools, which in there day were seen as the state equivalent of public schools.

And it could be argued that the 'politics of envy' is as bad as labelling people as 'deserving poor'. Both equate to a poor attitude.

Your assumption Uncleglen, that Tory Mps are better for the country because of their privileged backgrounds doesn't make sense either. Working people and the poor were treated abismally until a Labour Party was formed to represent them. If anything, that party has become more Tory like over the years, not the other way round. And todays Tory party has never been more self serving. It's higher levels are dominated by the descendents of stockbrokers and bankers, rather than the industrialists of the past (who actually employed people). It's an important distinction to make. If your wealth comes from something that bears no direct realtionship to people, over something that does, your attitude to the role of money becomes skewed. It's partly why Cameron is in the mess he now is.

Channel 4 also found links to Camerons father and another tax haven investment yesterday, so this is going to carry on for Cameron. And Nigel Farage has been exposed too as having set up an account in a tax haven - for all his pretence at being a common man, he is a city boy to the end.

[????]

Classist rubbish Blah. There have been 3 working class PMs - Callaghan, Major and Heath; you do the maths. Plenty of Tory MPs re from working class backgrounds and the Labour Party haven't done much for the white working classes since the 70s.

You can disagree on their right or wrongs but a stockbroker who didn't have some overseas funds to other his clients to legally maximise their returns on investment would soon be out of clients. Just tedious class war and a complete misunderstanding of investment/ finance is all I pull out of the tedious memes of social media on all this. Based on this even more than before I wouldn't trust anyone on the left with the economy and that's been reinforced by the uniformed rot they are all peddling about finance/investment etc. Venezuela is what we'd end up like.