To think Gary Barlow is worse than a benefits cheat?

[Roshbegosh]

People cheating on benefits do at least need the money .... What he has done is hard to excuse IMO

I absolutely cannot bear Barlow, so to see him pilloried in the press gives me delicious goosebumps.

Welcome Minesril, a great first post!

I am not going to sulk that everyone ignored mine

Ataxlawyer

I never said it was ethical, just legal

That's why your post completely lacked interest.

even though sometimes I have had to help them do it

Forced? mm hmm.

You would be amazed at who does it. Absolutely amazed.

That, I doubt.

There are examples of tax planning being labelled as tax avoidance on this thread.

Tax planning is perfectly legal and HMRC will also be in agreement as the law is designed to encourage certain tax planning e.g. paying extra into your pension so that you don't go into the next tax bracket; HMRC will be entirely happy as the government want to encourage people to save into a pension. No tax 'avoidance' whatsoever even though you have in effect paid less tax, because tax planning is different to the definition of tax avoidance.

Tax avoidance seeks to exploit the law by having some kind of artificialness to its structure (e.g. in Icebreaker, the inflated borrowing and just ticking the boxes of being a partner), and the artificialness is 'solely' for the purpose of creating a tax advantage not intended by law and not in the course of the furtherance of business. HMRC never agree to tax avoidance schemes so will take steps to challenge schemes in the courts as they have done with Icebreaker. Some they win, some they lose. The intention of knowingly entering into a scheme that has some artificialness to it to create a tax advantage by using a loophole is where the argument on morality comes in.

Tax evasion is deliberately acting outside of the law with intent to deceive HMRC of tax revenues.

YANBU,

They're disgusting, these greedy, venal men who can never be rich enough.

JK Rowling is no longer the richest woman in Britain because she has given so much of her money away.

Some people are essentially decent and some aren't. I'm not surprised that Take That are greedy and I'm not surprised that Jason, the only one of them who comes across as having the ability to think and feel outside of his own small concerns, was not involved in this rich man's legal scam.

I get a bit frustrated by the government talking about 'aggressive tax avoidance' rather than tax evasion. Clearly there are various genuine schemes that are designed to encourage people to e.g. make 'British' films by helping them avoid tax. If you want to use one of these schemes you will be investing large sums of money and you will need the advice of an accountant or a lawyer to ensure that you pay the right amount of tax (unless, for instance, you are a film director who is really, really interested in tax).

On the other hand (possibly naively), I would have thought that schemes of the kind Barlow used would now come under the General Anti Avoidance Rule making them obviously tax evasion rather than tax avoidance as they are set up purely to avoid tax and have no genuine commercial purpose.

At a certain level you need a specialist to advise you on tax, even if you are one of the vast majority of people who doesn't want to swing the lead to reduce your tax bill.

If people are evading tax, prosecute them. If people are 'aggressively avoiding tax' and the government doesn't like it they should change the law.

Also, I don't think the fact that a tax avoidance scheme being registered with HMRC ever denoted that it was approved by them.

Ooh just checked HMRC website. Apparently the lingo has moved on. "Avoidance" is dodgy. Tax "planning" is fine. I am sure GB just thought he was "planning" his tax.

There seem to be a lot of people who think that GB is a bit stupid and wouldn't have been able to understand what his advisers were asking him to do. Why? Because he's a musician?

If you are told that you should take out insurance in Gibraltar in case this particular tax planning escapade doesn't work out and hmrc successfully might have it struck down how stupid do you gave to be to know it isn't entirely legit.

The scheme wasn't illegal but it wasn't legal either. Until it went to court no one knew. But it was obvious it wasn't a legitimate business idea likely to make a profit. He's been very disingenuous.

Minesril, thanks for that. The government rhetoric about 'benefit scroungers' drives me up the fecking wall. The brass neck of the way they ignore the facts to pillory the worst-off is breathtaking.

It WAS legal, until HMRC won a judgement against it.

Having a judgement against you in a civil court doesn't make you a criminal .

If you pay your ex £10 a week maintenance and he takes you to court and gets a judgement against you to pay £20 a week, it doesn't make you a criminal. It doesn't mean that you were intentionally and artificially trying to rip him off and exploit him. You might genuinely have believed that £10 is the right amount. You might have been told so by your lawyers or accountant .

Tax avoidance isn't illegal. Tax evasion is however.

Benefits cheats are just that, cheats, and such behaviour is illegal.

It's controversial but generally, people need to learn the difference.

At the end of the day if your local hospital is falling a part it is fantastically more the fault of the rich dodging tax than people committing benefit fraud.

As many others have pointed out it's not comparable. One is straightforwardly illegal and the other a highly complex tax rule loophole change.
I'm a bit meh about how much media coverage this has garnered. This isn't Barlows 'fault' it's just that HMRC have now closed that particular loophole.
There are many many people who reduce their tax bills in the UK both obviously (isa) and through more complex schemes.
Tax in the UK is ridiculously complex and the more money you earn and earning from different sources (rather than PAYE) becomes a minefield.
Minimising your tax bill is perfectly reasonable, the extents to which you go (within the law) are your own moral issue.
However If you deliberately go outside the law (rich or poor) then you deserve everything you get thrown at you.
Accidentally mistakes should be rectified and treated reasonably.

..the big difference between a (unsuccessful) tax minimiser and a benefit cheat is that the former is trying to legally keep hold of money that he has gone out and earned, whereas the latter is stealing our money without contributing to society through work or services (obviously the same does not apply to legitimate benefit claimants as their claims are perfectly honest, they are often working for their benefits, or are unable to, and this is the society that we have all voted to live in where we support the most vulnerable).

Icebeing how are cuts the fault of the rich?? The top 1% of earners pay 29% of all income tax. in addition there is the tax that is paid by their employees and businesses. You would like them to pay MORE?????? If they left or didn't bother (because taxed too heavily) then the hospitals would suffer rather more drastic cuts. You should be thanking the rich for running successful businesses that generate the wealth and taxes to pay for the services you take for granted. What does "dodging tax" mean? It is almost impossible these days to not pay a significant contribution if you are wealthy, and if people reduce their tax bills honestly then how can they be said to be "dodging" tax any more than you are when you buy an ISA?

I think a lot of this is down to envy, not logic. GB has undoubtedly worked incredibly hard and paid a lot of taxes. That is so not comparable with a fraudster. GB will have been a net contributor to the country's wealth. The benefit fraudster will have been a drain.

Any ire should be directed towards the tax code, not Gary Barlow. His crimes are musical.

At the end of the day if your local hospital is falling a part it is fantastically more the fault of the rich dodging tax than people committing benefit fraud.

More to the point, the people who write the tax code.

Benefits and tax are just 2 sides of the same coin. Plenty of tax experts advise working people on how to structure their affairs so they can keep child benefit. Many people have to seek legal advice to ensure that they or their children get the disability benefits they need. Human nature means that a minority will try to take advantage of this.

Again, its not just about loopholes anymore. Any scheme that is clearly all about saving tax (as opposed to actually being a second hand car dealer or making a film) should now be illegal. The situation of these schemes being legal until proved otherwise should not continue. In the same way you can't claim a business expense that patently has nothing to do with your business and it is fraud if you register to reclaim vat with no intention of trading.

However, when Barlow et al entered into these schemes tax abuse wasnt as high profile as it is now. I don't think they were so much stupid or dishonest as trusting their advisors and focusing on their day job. Arguably the tax system isnt fair (based as it is on 12 month periods) to people like performers who may make a fortune in a couple of years but comparatively little over a lifetime. That is probably why this kind of scheme has been so attractive to them.

atax yes absolutely the rich should pay more. Even more than the more they currently pay.

We have a situation in which one person putting in a 60 hour week gets paid 1% of what another person putting in a 60 hour week gets.

If we valued people on their effort rather than some crazy perceived worth of their contribution then we wouldn't been in the shit whole we are in.

NOBODY needs to earn more than 100K a year. Anything you earn over that should go straight to the government.....

I might try that again with grammar and spelling...or not...

So I earn about 40K....If I got a pay rise to 50K I would need precisely none of that extra money. I already live within my means and have as many houses and kids as I need.

Now I could easily spend more of that money but that isn't the point. I could be living next to someone working twice my hours for a quarter my pay.

They might be on benefits to top up to a living wage...so yes I absolutely think I should be paying way more of my 10K pay rise into tax than the poor sod on benefits should.

is anyone here part of a salary sacrifice scheme at work? childcare voucher scenes are salary sacrifice schemes - legally taking advantage of a tax loop hole to allow you to swap part of your gross untaxed salary in return for vouchers. So you're not having to pay for childcare out of net, taxed income. Some company pension schemes are run on the same premise

I presume that all of the posters here taking the moral high ground don't take part in such schemes?

All that Gary Barlow was doing was taking part in a similar type of scheme on a bigger scale. He will have been warned that there was a risk that HMRC might challenge it and, if so, he would have to pay the tax back. That's what has happened.

So in your ideal world Icebeing humans should effectively be worker drones of the state, who's productivity should be all for the benefit of the government, save for some arbitrarily set allowance that is handed back to them?

And to think, at one time it was thought that government was set up to serve us, not the other way round!

I find your vision terrifying in a sort of 1984 dystopian nightmare kind of a way!

Oh - and plenty of people joined salary sacrifice schemes to lower their gross salary and ensure they kept their child benefit.

There were even threads on here about it

Oh my God - people seeking to minimise tax and maximise income none shocker