Take That!

shortchanged_2

prowla wrote: »

In Gary Barlow and Take That's defence (and they should pay the tax!), they have brought a heck of a lot of money into the country and helped create jobs.

Jobs that I'm sure people are paying the correct amount of tax.

Why do people feel the need to use the excuse for wealthy people fiddling the system by saying 'oh well they do create lots of jobs for people.'

chucknorris

shortchanged wrote: »

Jobs that I'm sure people are paying the correct amount of tax.

Why do people feel the need to use the excuse for wealthy people fiddling the system by saying 'oh well they do create lots of jobs for people.'

There is no excuse for tax evasion, though this was an attempt at tax avoidance, and even though this particular scheme was shown to be invalid (good result for us tax payers) I blame the Gov for leaving loopholes for accountants and tax specialists to exploit. It is a pity that the Inland Revenue can't somehow penalise these experts when they get something like this wrong.

geri1965_2

moneyinmypocket wrote: »

These groups are held in high regard by the renting yoof. Another win for the boomers.

What is the 'renting yoof'?

Fella

chucknorris wrote: »

There is no excuse for tax evasion, though this was an attempt at tax avoidance, and even though this particular scheme was shown to be invalid (good result for us tax payers) I blame the Gov for leaving loopholes for accountants and tax specialists to exploit. It is a pity that the Inland Revenue can't somehow penalise these experts when they get something like this wrong.

Yes, where the Govt gets it badly wrong is when they start to criticise (legitimate) tax avoidance. It's not complicated: Tax evasion is illegal & should be punished. Tax avoidance is common sense & should be applauded. If any Govt doesn't like the tax avoidance measures taken (by companies in particular) the answer is to change the tax laws, not to make populist noises about how wrong it is to minimise the amount of tax paid.

GeorgeHowell

Fella wrote: »

Yes, where the Govt gets it badly wrong is when they start to criticise (legitimate) tax avoidance. It's not complicated: Tax evasion is illegal & should be punished. Tax avoidance is common sense & should be applauded. If any Govt doesn't like the tax avoidance measures taken (by companies in particular) the answer is to change the tax laws, not to make populist noises about how wrong it is to minimise the amount of tax paid.

What the government tends to do is wait for someone to find a tax avoidance loophole, and then call it tax evasion.

I expect Take That had some smart-a*se accountants and lawyers telling them it was all above board.

Unless I've missed it, I don't recall seeing Take That standing up hypocritically spouting establishment-bashing, leftie claptrap whilst assiduouly doing everything possible to minimise their own tax bill, like some others that could be mentioned (and have).

prowla

shortchanged wrote: »

Jobs that I'm sure people are paying the correct amount of tax.

Why do people feel the need to use the excuse for wealthy people fiddling the system by saying 'oh well they do create lots of jobs for people.'

Please don't accuse me of that; I'm not excusing them (I even said "they should pay the tax!"), I'm just commenting on their positive side to balance some of the negativity.

As far as "the correct amount of tax" goes, that is not an accurately definable amount, and so is a meaningless comment.

Annie1960

chucknorris wrote: »

There is no excuse for tax evasion, though this was an attempt at tax avoidance, and even though this particular scheme was shown to be invalid (good result for us tax payers) I blame the Gov for leaving loopholes for accountants and tax specialists to exploit. It is a pity that the Inland Revenue can't somehow penalise these experts when they get something like this wrong.

It's not really quite that simple, the govt does not put loopholes there.

The govt decides the tax rules., and these are voted in by MPs in the Finance Bill (aka The Budget). Most people pay the correct amount of tax (via PAYE). People who are self employed have various calculations to do via self assessment. So far, so good.

The issue arises when somebody decides they can try to avoid paying tax by making up some sort of system to get around it. They come up with some sort of scheme that parliament could never have envisaged, they persuade gullible people to pay them to avoid tax, tell them it's all legal because there is no law against it. This is technically true, but also misleading.

However, when these matters go to court, the judge decides based on what the intention of parliament was when it passed the bill. So, aggressive tax avoidance schemes are likely to lose in court.

The Take That scheme was solely designed to avoid tax, there was no genuine business activity going on, it was purely circulating money from one place to another to avoid tax. The same applies to Chris Moyles who claimed to be a used car salesman making a loss to offset against his tax. I bet he never spent any of his time buying or selling used cars, it was just a paper exercise to move money from one place to another with the intention of avoiding tax.

No government can ever stop people from coming up with these ideas and trying to avoid tax. My view is that the professional bodies overseeing accountants, solicitors, and anyone else involved in setting up and promoting these schemes need to make it a disciplinary offence to try to come up with creative ideas for aggressive tax avoidance.

chucknorris

Annie1960 wrote: »

It's not really quite that simple, the govt does not put loopholes there.

The govt decides the tax rules., and these are voted in by MPs in the Finance Bill (aka The Budget). Most people pay the correct amount of tax (via PAYE). People who are self employed have various calculations to do via self assessment. So far, so good.

The issue arises when somebody decides they can try to avoid paying tax by making up some sort of system to get around it. They come up with some sort of scheme that parliament could never have envisaged, they persuade gullible people to pay them to avoid tax, tell them it's all legal because there is no law against it. This is technically true, but also misleading.

However, when these matters go to court, the judge decides based on what the intention of parliament was when it passed the bill. So, aggressive tax avoidance schemes are likely to lose in court.

The Take That scheme was solely designed to avoid tax, there was no genuine business activity going on, it was purely circulating money from one place to another to avoid tax. The same applies to Chris Moyles who claimed to be a used car salesman making a loss to offset against his tax. I bet he never spent any of his time buying or selling used cars, it was just a paper exercise to move money from one place to another with the intention of avoiding tax.

No government can ever stop people from coming up with these ideas and trying to avoid tax. My view is that the professional bodies overseeing accountants, solicitors, and anyone else involved in setting up and promoting these schemes need to make it a disciplinary offence to try to come up with creative ideas for aggressive tax avoidance.

I realize that it isn't that simple, but leaving holes will always attract those who wish to exploit loopholes, yes of course it is easier to find fault and exploit weakness in work done by others, but I don't think a particularly good job was done in the first place to attempt to mitigate that exploitation.

Annie1960

chucknorris wrote: »

I realize that it isn't that simple, but to be honest I didn't have time to write a 12,000 word dissertation and I definitely thought that no one would want to read it (not to mention the word count of a post being exceeded). But leaving holes will always attract those who wish to exploit loopholes, yes of course it is easier to find fault and exploit weakness in work done by others, but I don't think a particularly good job was done in the first place to mitigate that exploitation.

I did not write anything like 12,00 words, I have no idea what you used to come up with this figure!

Nobody is making you read it. Don't read it if you don't want to, and why on earth would you reply to my post if you haven't read it? If you don't want to read my posts, you can click the 'ignore' button. I'm off to do that with your posts right now.

You seem to have some delusional idea that there is a word limit for posts.

Leaving holes? - You have clearly not understood the situation. Nobody has left any holes. The tax rules are very clear, but people who are greedy and want to exploit other people will always be able to find someone gullible enough to believe it is 'legal'.

chucknorris

Annie1960 wrote: »

I did not write anything like 12,00 words, I have no idea what you used to come up with this figure!

Nobody is making you read it. Don't read it if you don't want to, and why on earth would you reply to my post if you haven't read it? If you don't want to read my posts, you can click the 'ignore' button. I'm off to do that with your posts right now.

You seem to have some delusional idea that there is a word limit for posts.

Leaving holes? - You have clearly not understood the situation. Nobody has left any holes. The tax rules are very clear, but people who are greedy and want to exploit other people will always be able to find someone gullible enough to believe it is 'legal'.

It is easily explained where I came up with the 12,000 words because right now I have to mark 14 dissertations of 12,000 words that are on my study desk. The 12,000 words was not aimed at you, I don't know where you got that impression from. I really don't have a problem with you, why on earth would I want to put you on ignore?

When I said ‘holes’ I meant tax rules that allow others to exploit, if they were written tighter there would not be so much exploitation.

I assumed that there would be a word count for posts, if there isn't I was wrong, I think it is a bit unkind to call it 'delusional' though as I think it was a logical assumption that there would be even if there isn't.