To think that David Cameron should resign?

[deeedeee]

Presiding over a government that is trying to spin doctors and teachers into militants ,

Supporting a chancellor that has failed to reduce the deficit by his own standards and has delivered two hated and u turning budgets in a row, over the death of the British Steel Industry, is attacking renewable energy in times of climate change, is taking support from the ill and disabled is and NOW he has admitted benefiting from TAX AVOIDANCE????!!!!
This is all wrong. How many more years of this?

Both have proven themselves untrustworthy, liars, contradictory gobshites and expectant of the people to uphold standards they dont wish to do so themselves. Not completely different IME

Oranges
How are they different then?

Why on earth did he not say on Monday "My father set up a legal tax avoidance scheme with me as a shareholder. As I formulated my strategy as PM I felt legal tax avoidance was incompatible with my thoughts on a fairer society and so we sold our shares and paid tax on those profits"?
That would have covered the bases and avoided the drip feeding that gets the hackles rising.
He's managed to convey subterfuge where there was none. Incompetent twat.

Namechangingchameleon
I hate the benefit feral chav culture that Labour enabled. This country is on its knees throughl it.

Beg Pardon?
the working class work ethic was destroyed in the Thatcher era. When she was finally ousted, the dole queue had increased from 1 to 4 million.

Gordon Brown was forced to bail out the banks, they refused to pay the money back. And paid themselves more in bonuses.

It's not right or normal to crave and covert and stash away more than you need at the expense of others. It's greed. It's inequality.

Do you have more than you need OP? Eaten chocolate this month? Why didn't you donate it? It is perfectly normal to covet and crave. This should be seen as positive as people strive to better their lives and those who depend upon them.

Given the demographic of MN, I think decrying £117 a month as "not a huge sum of money" is deeply inflammatory, and offensive.

Is it really offensive? Really? Get a grip. That's the price of a coffee a day. You feeling it's a large amount of money doesn't make it offensive.

Is anyone with an ISA doing something morally wrong? We pay the maximum allowable into our children's ISAs too. Tax minimisation is normal.

Giddy

DC didn't need to disclose his 'earnings' from the sale of the shares because coincidently he had just enough shares valued at just under the HMRC disclosure level. And they were split between him and Sam.

Nice little earner per year.

Cameron apologists - what was the reason for doing this in
Panama? The idea it's to trade in US dollars has been debunked, so why?

Potatoes - I have an ISA, but not in Panama.

Rooster I don't know how old you are, but I'm old enough to remember when the Tories were a dirty word, any allegiance to them would be shared in an embarrassed whisper, their local activist base was almost non-existent (even now, party membership is embarrassingly low and vanishingly irrelevant to their party funding), and Policy Exchange, Taxpayers Alliance etc were regarded as a bunch of fringe hard-right crackpots, and certainly not drivers of government policy.

Eventually we will all be thoroughly sick of them and they will be toppled again, although this time they are doing a fair amount of early rigging (boundary and voter registration changes, destroying labour's funding base through the TU bill etc) to help prolong their stay as long as possible.

Never say never.

Why people choose to protect their families by ensuring they keep their wealth is obvious. Paying more tax than you need by law is a dreadful thnig which ensures a big state and which means you are less able to provide for your chidlren. Tax avoidance within the law is a moral good. Cameron and his father have done nothing wrong - indeed they have the moral high ground because they put family first.

I agree that Milliband, Margaret Hodge and Cameron have not handled the PR on their lawful tax avoidance very well but there we go. It will die down very shortly.

The public can decide when we have the next election in 2020. Let us hope the Tories get in although even they seem to be going for high taxes and a massive bloated state these days, silly them.

Get a grip. That's the price of a coffee a day.

For some people £100 a month is the difference between feeding their children and not feeding them.

There are many people - and are not all poor, or all labour voters - who have a very low opinion of rich people who already have more money than they can spend, and who then engage in morally and legally dubious practices in order to have even more money.

Tax minimisation using vehicles legislated for that purpose, such as ISAs, is entirely different to using loopholes in tax law and anonymous offshore vehicles.

Same old people spouting the same old nonsense...

Misti for some people it will be a lot of money but for the majority of people in this country it isn't a lot of money but. Most people will spend that amount of money on coffee, or cigarettes or wine or going out every month.

There are many people who don't like the rich for no other reason than they are rich. A lot of these people though ar rich themselves but want to be seen to lying against the establishment - they are all rebels without a clue cause

Rebelling not lying.

The idea that it's morally 'good' to pay more money into the wretched state to somehow eradicate inequality is perverse. It's the state that has singlehandedly created an enormous underclass that can do nothing for itself, and their children are paying the price.

Misti for some people it will be a lot of money but for the majority of people in this country it isn't a lot of money but. Most people will spend that amount of money on coffee, or cigarettes or wine or going out every month

Sure. And your point is? That it's OK to sail close to the wind, morally and legally, in order to pay a bit less tax as long as you're rich enough for the sums to be irrelevant? Because that's a fucking terrible argument. How do you feel about people who cut their working hours in order to maximise their benefits?

Figmentofmyimagination I was born in the early 70's, so draw your own conclusions. And 'Tory' has been a dirty word for as long as I remember.

As for 'divers of govt policy', the Unions in the 70's had a far greater impact upon Govt policy and public debate than the Taxpayers Alliance et al. And didn't they do well!

When I say Left, I mean Left. I mean Corbyn, McDonnell, Galloway and those other fossils, relics of a bygone age. Offer people like me someone like Alan Johnson and I'll definitely consider his attributes as potentially worthy of a vote. But then he's not Left, in my mind. The Left is a different world, one I will never accept.

Here's a thing. When I see someone drive past in a Ferrrai, or some other similarly high end car, my automatic response is to think, 'Good on them. They have, on balance of probability, earned that car by dint of hard work and initiative. With any luck, they're employing a bunch of people and enabling THEIR aspirations to come to fruition'

Corbyn et al see someone coast past in a Ferrari and think 'Tax avoiding plutocrat, robbing the poor, undeserving, why do they get to drive round in a nice car when other people can't afford to eat' etc etc.

This is the problem. Views of human nature that are entirely at odds with each other. Mine was conditioned by being brought up by a single mother from the age of 3. No money, so just work work work. But, apart from child benefit, which she earned through tax, it was always about self reliance, not state reliance.

The argument about the amount of money he made is ridiculous, the people involved are financially illiterate, if they attach any meaning to the amounts.

Using figures from a BBC article, he turned 12,497 pounds into 31,500 over a period of about 13 years: I calculate he made an annualised return of 7.25% a year.

That is a completely bog-standard return from investing in shares. The actual amount in pounds he made is irrelevant, it was a proportionate and fairly average return on the amount of capital he invested. He didn't rob disabled children for their lunch money. (One article I skimmed said the fund held shares in companies like Coca-cola, Apple, etc.)

On an impulse I googled the fund name and I think I've found it: if you want you can buy it (in its current incarnation as an Ireland unit trust) and hold it in your ISA or a pension, just like any of thousands of other funds any UK investor can use.

www.trustnetoffshore.com/Factsheets/Factsheet.aspx?fundCode=NWBH&univ=DC

Sure. And your point is? That it's OK to sail close to the wind, morally and legally, in order to pay a bit less tax as long as you're rich enough for the sums to be irrelevant? Because that's a fucking terrible argument. How do you feel about people who cut their working hours in order to maximise their benefits?

There is an obvious distinction to be made between wishing to take more of other people's money and wishing to keep more of one's own earned income.

Why on earth did he not say on Monday "My father set up a legal tax avoidance scheme with me as a shareholder. As I formulated my strategy as PM I felt legal tax avoidance was incompatible with my thoughts on a fairer society and so we sold our shares and paid tax on those profits"?

He probably didn't say it because, as far as I know from the very little coverage I've bothered to read, it isn't true. The fund was not a tax avoidance scheme.

I'm just reading up on the most recent child seen repeatedly by Social Services in the run up to her death and not taken from her mother, despite many obvious clues that she was being abused.

The state is amazing, please sign me up for more taxes.

Wasonthelist where has the myth been debunked that he used the fund to buy shares which traded in dollars?

He bought into a fund started by his father many years before he shares.

As I asked before, which no one has answered, can you tell me how much tax he has avoided from this investment? How much tax do you think he should have paid?

I don't think he needed to answer the questions because it was a decision made many many years ago, it was a private arrangement that he didn't have to declare on the members register, the money was all declared through his tax return, the fund was audited and taxed accordingly according to papers released yesterday.

What has he got to answer for?

apple so you're fine with people sailing close to the wind, morally and legally, as long as they're rich enough?

theoretician that makes no sense: why the mealy mouthed string of denials and explanations if there is no tax avoidance story?

I'll be clear here: I think there is a tax avoidance story, in the sense that Cameron has been actively involved in lobbying for offshore funds not to be subject to the same reporting regulations as offshore companies. I don't believe that he has done anything "wrong" as far as his personal tax affairs are concerned: he realised, when he became leader of the opposition, that there was a potential issue with his fund holdings and he subsequently sold them. He deserves some credit for that, much as it pains me to say so.

On the other hand, the arguments on here from the Tory supporters - that it's fine to reduce your tax by any means fair or foul - is just utterly depressing.

Peggy, There is a parallel thread on which I gave more detail but to summarise....

The fund was registered with HMRC from the beginning, and all the income and gains were declared to HMRC every year. Filing a tax return each year and waiting for HMRC to audit the fund's tax return and issue a certificate would be a funny thing to do if you're avoiding tax! HMRC keeps a list on its website of the funds that are registered with it. This fund is on there and has been on this list since the 1980s.

Bottom line, he paid exactly the same amount of tax that he would have paid had he invested in a UK fund. Also, the fund itself would have paid less tax, if it was based in the UK.

Cameron could have avoided half the grief he's had if he had just explained this rather than trying to avoid giving details.