Cameron Tax Dodger

Aretnap

Moby wrote: »

Is everyone liable for tax in the UK able to take advantage of the same opportunities? I read somewhere you had to have 50k up front to invest in Blairmore!

That's not true. I can buy shares in Blairmore through my own very ordinary ISA platform here. The minimum investment through the platform is £500. And unlike Cameron, I wouldn't have to pay tax on the dividends or the capital gains because of the ISA wrapper.

£50K is (I believe) the minimum if you want to invest directly with Blairmore. That's not unusual - most funds have a high minimum for direct investment which ordinary mortals get round by using a platform or a fund supermarket such as AJBell. It's not really any different from phoning up McVities, asking to buy some Jaffa Cakes and being told that their minimum order is £10,000 worth, or whatever. That doesn't mean that Jaffa Cakes are reserved for the super rich, it just means that the manufacturers only deal directly with large customers and normal people have to buy them through a middleman (eg Tesco).

The fact that the £50K minimum investment has been reported as meaning that the fund is available only to the super rich suggests that the people doing the reporting don't have much idea of what they're talking about.

Blairmore appears to be domiciled in Ireland rather than Panama these days following a merger, so it's perhaps a bit less exotic that it used to be (though Ireland still has a low rate of corporation tax). And I wouldn't actually want to invest in it anyway - it has rather high fees and its performance over the last few years has been less than stellar. But having checked some of the funds which I do have in my own fairly modest ISA and pension I see quite a few based in Ireland and [URL="https://www.youinvest.co.uk/market-research/LSE:L6EW?1=1&tab=4&SecurityToken=0P0000TYKL]22]0]ETEXG$XLON&Id=0P0000TYKL&ClientFund=0&CurrencyId=GBP&ms-redirect-path=/1c6qh1t6k9default.aspx"]at least one[/URL] that's domiciled in Luxembourg for what I presume are tax reasons. So yes, you can invest in "offshore" funds with a fairly unremarkable amount of spare cash if you want to.

Aretnap

antrobus wrote: »

The only vaguely interesting things to have emerged so far are that;

1. Jeremy Corbyn got fined £100 for failing to submit his tax return on time, and

2. Jeremy Corbyn failed to include his state pension on his tax return, and therefore provided HMRC with "false information" which is an offence.

Which I think is hilarious.

He's also the banks' favourite customer. Not a penny of his £75K salary appears to have gone anywhere near an account that pays any interest whatsoever.

Plus it took him six days to publish his tax return because he couldn't find it. Somehow I have a vision of the Russian attack being in full swing, and a prime minister saying "now I know I have those Trident launch codes somewhere... maybe they're underneath that pile of pizza flyers..."

mwpt

chewmylegoff wrote: »

It seems to me that despite acknowledging that you don't understand tax that you are insistent that Cameron has avoided some despite there being no evidence that he has. It's pretty clear that you don't care whether or not he has done anything wrong.

Many funds have a minimum investment requirement - this is both because they don't want to deal with the admin involved in reporting to lots of small time investors and also because their funds can only be marketed to 'professional' investors which basically means people with lots of money who sign a disclaimer that they aren't retail clients.

In any case this is nothing to do with tax avoidance. You're right that no tax is payable on the initial investment that a person makes when they invest in an offshore fund. The same applies to an investment made into an onshore fund, investment capital is not taxed - gains are taxed when you sell the investment if they exceed you annual CGT allowance. Sorry to disappoint you but he didn't avoid any tax that he would have paid if Blairmore was onshore.

I'm not sure why you keep going on about morality either. Why is it immoral to invest money and pay tax on the investment income?

You think an ISA is ok - if he had invested in an ISA (or a precursor tax wrapper) he wouldn't have paid any tax on the investment income or gains. That is ok with you, it seems, but a fully declared offshore investment where tax is paid on the income is not for some reason.

Would you rather he had invested in an ISA and paid no tax instead? Would that have helped the greater good?

While I appreciate the well constructed post and sound reasoning, I fear that it is wasted on Moby. I'm sure he is a nice chap but he despises a set of people (the Tories) and in particular hates David Cameron. I guess this is because David hasn't given him a pay rise.

So when someone is irrational with hate, bad things happen. In this case, lets hope the bad thing is that he evades all the logic in your post rather than physically explodes due to pent up rage.

Moby, I hope my post cheers you up, I don't mean any harm.

Generali

Aretnap wrote: »

He's also the banks' favourite customer. Not a penny of his £75K salary appears to have gone anywhere near an account that pays any interest whatsoever.

Plus it took him six days to publish his tax return because he couldn't find it. Somehow I have a vision of the Russian attack being in full swing, and a prime minister saying "now I know I have those Trident launch codes somewhere... maybe they're underneath that pile of pizza flyers..."

It's okay, Mr Corbyn has already stated that he wouldn't press the button regardless of the circumstances. He would only need to find the codes to hand them over to his successor.

chewmylegoff

ruggedtoast wrote: »

It is not remotely the same.

ISAs are available to anyone able to save enough money to contribute to them.

If you are really incapable of understanding the difference between this, and people worth millions hiring expensive accountants and fund managers to move their finances into shell companies and baffling webs of offshore investment vehicles, then I suggest you reappraise your opening comment.

It almost certainly reveals much more about you than it does about me.

On a separate note, and not directed at Mistermeaner who appears to be artless, lacking in any kind of grace or wit, coarsely dislikable and probably unable to follow this debate from any vantage point other than his own myopia, I would welcome ISAs disappearing.

I also do not care if the rules on pensions were changed too. I would much prefer it if everyone paid tax, the NHS was properly funded, and the trains ran on time.

The £3 or whatever I saved on my ISA last year is irrelevant to me.

I think I understand now. You want the narrative to be that Cameron has engaged in some shady dealings, paying "clever accountants" to formulate a tax avoidance structure for his money which, whilst all technically legal, breaks the spirit of the law. His offshore web of deceit demonstrates that he is part of the illuminati etc etc.

The trouble is that the facts are inconsistent with the narrative as all he did is buy some shares in an already established investment fund about which there is absolutely nothing remarkable. There is no web of deceit, smoke and mirrors, or even a devious accountant or tax lawyer. There is just an investment in a vanilla fund which as stated above by another poster, is available to anyone with an ISA.

I'm sure you will continue to believe that he has avoided taxes in some scurrilous way, whilst being completely unable to explain what taxes and how.

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

I don't understand. How can Mr Cameron know he is the beneficiary of a trust that hasn't even been set up yet?

He cannot, which is my point.

But a chap could establish a discretionary trust in his life and name his son as one of several beneficiaries of the trust. In his expression of wishes to the trustees (say a bank) this chap could ask them not to tell his son that he is a beneficiary until he ceases to have a front line role in politics and at that time pay him £1m a year.

Equally there other ways of creating a trust from an existing trust where such discretion is given.

Gen, you are clearly a clever chap well versed in the ways of the financial world. Are you telling me that an offshore trust could not be used in that way?

kinger101

Generali wrote: »

It's okay, Mr Corbyn has already stated that he wouldn't press the button regardless of the circumstances. He would only need to find the codes to hand them over to his successor.

Vladamir? ,,,,,,,,

BobQ

Generali wrote: »

It's worth noting that Australians seem to get by very well despite spending per head being considerably lower than in the UK. We volunteer and we get stuff done for ourselves. We don't wait for some unionised idiot to turn up to paint our school because if we did it wouldn't happen.

You seem to have implemented the Big Society, pity that never took on over here. Maybe we need some more austerity to bring the spend per head down to AUS levels?

My impression is that while some people are doing very well indeed, Britain is becoming a deeply unhappy and divided nation.

Generali

BobQ wrote: »

He cannot, which is my point.

But a chap could establish a discretionary trust in his life and name his son as one of several beneficiaries of the trust. In his expression of wishes to the trustees (say a bank) this chap could ask them not to tell his son that he is a beneficiary until he ceases to have a front line role in politics and at that time pay him £1m a year.

Equally there other ways of creating a trust from an existing trust where such discretion is given.

Gen, you are clearly a clever chap well versed in the ways of the financial world. Are you telling me that an offshore trust could not be used in that way?

Changing the terms of a trust is very hard to do and as a result expensive. We have been changing the terms of some of the trusts at work (these are just normal funds that you or I would invest our pensions in but they are set up as trusts for legal reasons) and it has taken a team of people years to do.

Mr Cameron, or indeed you, could set up a trust at some point in the future just as either of you, heaven forbid, could be hit by a bus.

Generali

BobQ wrote: »

You seem to have implemented the Big Society, pity that never took on over here. Maybe we need some more austerity to bring the spend per head down to AUS levels?

It would take a huge drop in spending, well beyond anything that the Tories are proposing, to get spending down to Australian levels. For example, most people except the very poorest co-pay for medical treatment whereas the Brits like to maintain the fiction that healthcare is free.

BobQ wrote: »

My impression is that while some people are doing very well indeed, Britain is becoming a deeply unhappy and divided nation.

Maybe. Certainly some of the newspapers like to peddle that line and Mr Corbyn certainly does. If I was expecting to live the rest of my days sitting on my Aris, wanting everyone else to provide for my every need then I'd probably be quite annoyed with this Government.