UK Growth at 6 year high as forcasters say UK is exceeding expectation

[Uptowngirl]

Are we talking percentages here?

 

No 100% of the money donated by Lord Sainsbury and Mittal went to the Labour Party.

 

Also 100% of the shares donate by Mills went to the party too. This was quite interesting as it was deliberate tax avoidance and after discussion the party ignored its principals and took the lot and said sod the tax man. A nice touch I thought.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10102190/Donor-John-Millss-gift-to-Labour-avoided-tax-bill-of-1.5m.html

 

John Mills gave the party shares in his shopping channel company, JML, valued at £1.65 million in January. In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Mills said that the donation was made in shares rather than cash so the tax on the deal would be significantly reduced.

 

Describing the donation as “tax efficient”, he said the form of the donation was agreed with figures in Labour’s fund-raising team.

 

Mr Mills said that if he had given £1.65 million from his own income he would have had to pay nearly half of that sum to the taxman.

 

Asked why he made the donations in shares, Mr Mills said: “To be honest with you, it is the most tax efficient way of doing this.

 

“Because, otherwise, you get no tax relief on donations to political parties for understandable reasons.

 

“If you donate to a political party out of a tax paid income, up until April it was 50 per cent and now it is 45 [per cent].

 

“That means if it is £100,000, the Labour party gets £55,000 and the Government gets £45,000.”

 

Mr Mills, a former councillor in Camden, suggested that the idea of donating in shares came following discussions with the Labour Party.

 

He said: “It emerged … came out of a discussion I had with them about the best way of doing it.

 

“It is quite a good model [of donating]. Labour has got people who deal with compliance and the legal side of all this. They are very sensitive nowadays.”

 

Mr Mills’s donation, the biggest from an individual so far this year, is the only gift to a major political party to have been made in shares. Accountants said Mr Mills is likely to have avoided up to £1.5 million in tax on the value of the stock he gave to the party.

 

The news will embarrass Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, who has repeatedly criticised tax avoidance. He said only last month that it was “wrong” that Google had gone “to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying its taxes”.