donkey Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 I know you didn't. I fail to see why you are upset - you were using your horse and life savings as an analogy weren't you? Therefore your stupidity was also analogous. Maybe you could climb down off that horse, you'll get cold without your shirt. And there was me accusing you of being facetious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 Don't worry about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildcat Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 Ah, a mistype is it? The opening paragraph of an executive summary by a supposed tax expert of a document hosted on a union website is a mistype of monumentality misleading proportions. I feel your case has lost a smidgeon of credibility there. I noticed it right away. How many people won't yet will go on to peddle the myths in that ridiculous paper? Hardly since the point is so obvious it is easy to miss and isn't the purpose of the report so is easily overlooked. I have no adverse position on tax planning. It is a legitimate, legal and responsible part of any and every organisation that handles money, from government Olympic schemes to pensioners penny savings accounts. Tax evasion is rightly punishable. The point is tax planning should involve compliance, not setting up loads of ephemeral companies to pass money around with the specific intention of avoiding compliance. That is clearly immoral, costs us a fortune and can be prevented through closing loopholes and making it an obligation on companies to demonstrate their compliance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildcat Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 More on the issue here: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/reading/ http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=103 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigthumb Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 The point is tax planning should involve compliance, not setting up loads of ephemeral companies to pass money around with the specific intention of avoiding compliance. That is clearly immoral, costs us a fortune and can be prevented through closing loopholes and making it an obligation on companies to demonstrate their compliance. I suppose when people saw Tony Blair employing teams of accountants to do just that with his money, people assumed that if the Prime Minister was doing it then it was OK for them to follow suit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 Hardly since the point is so obvious it is easy to miss and isn't the purpose of the report so is easily overlooked. To you, yes. To me yes. To everyone? I wouldn't be so bold. If such a simple and obvious mistake can remain we can only imagine how much other absolute tosh there is in there. Perhaps you could drop a line to the union to ask them to remove the grossly misleading document from their website. I'm sure that they wouldn't want to mislead people on the matter of public expenditure and taxation. The point is tax planning should involve compliance, not setting up loads of ephemeral companies to pass money around with the specific intention of avoiding compliance. That is clearly immoral, costs us a fortune and can be prevented through closing loopholes and making it an obligation on companies to demonstrate their compliance. You cite one method that is incredibly rare and (as alluded to by Bigthumb) exploited by only a few such as Tony Blair with his opaque yet mysteriously tax efficient (and apparently legal) Windrush matrix. Charities no less ! Most tax planning is simple and straight forward and would never be disallowed yet it gets caught up in the 'fortune' that you think the government is missing out on finding new ways to waste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildcat Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 The other great myth being peddled. Did you find it on a union website? You can see it is a global recession in every newspaper report. The only places where you will find it blamed on Gordon Brown are on blogs written by unhinged loonies. To you, yes. To me yes. To everyone? I wouldn't be so bold. If such a simple and obvious mistake can remain we can only imagine how much other absolute tosh there is in there. Imagine what you want, a typo doesn't discredit a report, nor does it discredit the wealth of research that has gone in to studies on the problems unpaid tax causes us and the third world. Perhaps you could drop a line to the union to ask them to remove the grossly misleading document from their website. I'm sure that they wouldn't want to mislead people on the matter of public expenditure and taxation. I have done. You cite one method that is incredibly rare and (as alluded to by Bigthumb) exploited by only a few such as Tony Blair with his opaque yet mysteriously tax efficient (and apparently legal) Windrush matrix. Charities no less ! Tony Blair's use of tax loopholes, is just one example of many. So where is your counter evidence that it is rare? Most tax planning is simple and straight forward and would never be disallowed yet it gets caught up in the 'fortune' that you think the government is missing out on finding new ways to waste. I am not talking about tax planning, I am talking about deliberate manipulation of the tax system to avoid tax compliance. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/TaxCSR.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 I'm pleased that you've asked them to remove the report, thanks. It is unreliable nonsense and has no place in the public domain. Your comment about 'unhinged loonies' is an extraordinary way to describe cogent and evidenced arguments that you don't happen to agree with. It is rather old tactic that doesn't work on me. As for 'tax loopholes' (of which there is no such thing) it is comparatively a rare thing. You began with talking about government general tax collection being the best way to distribute wealth, and I disagreed. Your point of view seems to have morphed into an argument about large sum tax evasion which I agree should be prosecuted. However, I do not see that the average business is involved in tax evasion or anything but simple and legal and allowable tax planning. Average businesses provide jobs and wealth to the majority of workers. They do so while paying taxes. The employees then go on to re-spend and pay further taxes in the way that they see fit. "deliberate manipulation of the tax system to avoid tax compliance" as you call it is tax evasion covered by legislation, enforceable and punishable. If it is not then it is tax planning and perfectly legal. In an ideal world I do not view it as the government's ultimate role to decide what they should spend their money on by levying higher taxes for anything other than the essentials that are required for a well functioning society. There are plenty of low tax nations with low impact government's that operate very successfully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donkey Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 However Blair and Brown ran the legislature, the Treasury, the Bank of England and the FSA with direct access to the best and most knowledgeable brains in their fields. Brown and blair did not regulate the banks for the same reason that the Bush administration didn't. Because there is a seamless link between them and the world of finance. Hence so many MPs get cushy directorships in the City on retiring from political life. The reason Blair and Brown were in office in the first place was because the British public were so wowed by the short term gains of 'Thatcherism' and 'Reaganomics' in the 80s, that they would not contemplate electing a Labour party which did not adopt those 'modernising' economic policies. Those policies basically inviolve allowing the self interest of capitalists to dictate how the economy should be run ie, with as little financial regulation as possible, plenty of loopholes to avoid taxes and with as much infrastructure put into the hands of private concerns as is possible. It's amusing to see so many of the admirers of the policies which Thatcher and Reagan introduced desperately trying to draw a line between those policies and their logical conclusion which we are now arriving at. And trying to draw a line between Between Blair and Cameron when non exists, or between Brown and Osbourne, or between any of these poiticians and the financial institutions which spawned them, and who they serve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted May 25, 2010 Share Posted May 25, 2010 Ah, so it's all Thatcher's fault as usual. It only took 5 pages to get to the default excuse used when there are no other excuses left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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