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?

If it had been Jeremy Corbyn in this position then the Tories would be all over him like pit bulls

they aren't all over him because they are in the same boat - they just haven't been found out yet. there are many more companies who deal with overseas trusts/investments than the company david camerons family dealt with and they have all been conspicuously quiet.

Or:

It may be legal but it shouldn't be.

Lots of legal thing things have since been outlawed.

So just for example, an extreme one I know but it makes the point, if when slavery was legal and the PM was found to have a slave, but then slavery was later outlawed, would it be ok to say oh but he didn't do anything wrong, it was legal?

I think tax avoidance is pretty shit.

It's legal but it's shit.

I just saw Corbyn on the news just as he set off for work on his bike. He was quite the nasty bugger and showed himself for who he is. There was just something about the way he reached for the phone and the look of he face whilst doing so ..........

If you pay into a pension you engage in tax avoidance. Do people on the thread think they shouldn't? Do they post a cheque back to HMRC for the tax relief they claimed?

Also many many off shore companies are there for legal reasons. The law firm here is the victim - victim of hacking. ]

A big state is a huge moral wrong. High tax rates are a bad thing. So anyone who seeks within the law to reduce that should be getting a hero's medal not criticism.

Now if anyone has broken the law eg stole Russian state funds or like Scot Young (divorced man who killed himself and seems to be one on the list) was hiding money in breach of court orders that is a different thing. However even there remember the law firm had no direct clients - its clients were institutinos, other law firms, accountants. By all means blame men like Young or the Russian cellist friend of Putin if they have broken the law, but not others.

the whole " it's legal" argument is bizarre when you are talking about those in government

If you are the person responsible for making the laws, and you benefit from laws that are morally wrong, or hypocritical in the context of other laws you have made or protected, then surely that is wrong?

the holocaust was legal, slavery was legal etc. just because something is legal, doesn't mean it should happen.

and it is plain to see it is wrong for the wealthiest members of society to be avoiding paying tax , when they have more money than they need to survive. Whilst spouting rhetoric about how the poor are taking more than their share.

but he didn't do anything wrong whilst he is in his current job - this has absolutely nothing to do with his job either - why should he resign from his job? he hasn't lied neither has done anything from what I can see.

Eustace, you win top tory troll of the thread! congratulations!

But DC has made public comments about people who chose to legally offshore tax plan (avoidance) as being morally corrupt/bad for UK.

As far as I'm aware, he hasn't done any off-shore tax-planning (avoidance).

It's almost as if people automatically start frothing when they hear the words "off-shore" or "trust", while having no idea what the sentence they appear in is meant to convey. Or that they think any two sentences containing either word must be talking about the same thing.

I see nothing wrong with even extreme tax avoidance, but I see no tax avoidance here at all. As far as I can tell at the moment, he's done less avoidance here than I do every time I pay money into my ISA or pension.

There was just something about the way he reached for the phone and the look of he face whilst doing so ..........

How do you mean? In what way?

I don't think he will resign but in terms of what he did wrong in his current job:

A) Criticised others for using tax avoidance measures whilst having done the same himself.

B) Lying by omission when questioned about it.

peggy, he owned those share while he was an MP, did not declare them in the Register of Member's Financial Interests, and sold them just before he became PM.
Then spent most of this week trying to lie without lying about it.

This issue is a matter of public standards. If David Cameron is allowed to simply brush off his failure to declare his financial interests in his fathers' offshore business empire for nine years of his parliamentary career as some kind of oversight, or try to argue that "it wasn't against the exact letter of the law - so it's OK" - the public would be giving our acquiescence to more of this kind of moral impropriety in the future.

I think the issue that is sticking is that that the tories are focusing in reducing the UK deficit through cutting essential services and benefits to people with disabilities, selling off assets and dismantling the NHS whilst being tax avoiders.

It's the Prime Minister we are talking about.
The man in charge of tax policy.

Theoretician

The confusion arises from what exactly did DC hold.

I think you/your holding sound like Investment Trusts (apologies if they're not). In this form the Investment 'Trust' is a UK company. You can have offshore ITs but they have to comply with UK regs.

This IT company is what you/I buy shares in. The company buys shares (BT/Glaxo etc...). So we hold X Investment company shares, not individual stocks - the underlying assets.

Unit Trusts are similar - you buy units of the UT not the underlying shares.

A family trust is a completely different legal structure. Totally different rules.

It's not clear what DC had. But I am very suspicious that DC could dispose of assets at just under £20k (HMRC disclosure limit) just before he became PM.
How many times have you returned you tax form and struck that lucky.

Although for the record, I do know that paying money into an ISA or Pension is not what is meant by tax avoidance. Apparently there are several levels of legal things you can do to reduce your tax bill, and using means that have been explicitly provided is so low down the chain that it doesn't count as avoidance, when politicians and civil servants use the term.

I just saw Corbyn on the news just as he set off for work on his bike. He was quite the nasty bugger and showed himself for who he is. There was just something about the way he reached for the phone and the look of he face whilst doing so ..........

Eh?

Well said dee

I think the issue that is sticking is that that the tories are focusing in reducing the UK deficit through cutting essential services and benefits to people with disabilities, selling off assets and dismantling the NHS whilst being tax avoiders.

Exactly.

I know greenish
The issue of whether DC should resign is not connected to Corbyn so that puzzled me too.

32 trillion estimated to have been hidden via Panama. And like I said that's not even the largest company/business/whatever of it's kind.

Imagine if all that money was put back into it's prospective countries and then taxed.

It would benefit the countries massively. That's my problem. How dare they cut funding to disabled people then have the audacity to shuffle funds and take away from tax.

deedee he didn't hold shares - he held units in a trust - does he have to declare these in the Register of Member's Financial Interests I have no idea - I don't think he does though because as others have said on here it seems like this is a family trust and not a unit trust.

notonyurjellybellynelly, apologies, i'm sorry I didn't see your entry for "top tory troll" came in just before Eustace's.

It was certainly brazen of you, trying to change the subject from Cameron's tax avoiding hypocritical lying assholery by talking about a strange look on Jermey corbyn's face. and granted it usually works in this country. so therefore you lost points on originality

so i'm afraid eustace still pips it with feeling sorry for the law firm.

I just saw Corbyn on the news just as he set off for work on his bike. He was quite the nasty bugger and showed himself for who he is. There was just something about the way he reached for the phone and the look of he face whilst doing so ..........

Absolutely priceless muppetry

peggy , a family trust? www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-offshore-trusts-eu-tax-crackdown-2013 maybe explains why he personally intervened to protect family trusts from transparency?

he's done less avoidance here than I do every time I pay money into my ISA

If Cameron had an ISA would he suddenly have decided that he needed to withdraw all the money from it? I suspect not - ISAs are openly advertised, and don't require an army of accountants and lawyers to set up.

He angered me last night (when he was getting redder and redder and his voice was rising), by trying to say it was an attack on his father. No, it wasn't - he could and should have come clean four days earlier and we now have a Tory admitting on breakfast TV that perhaps that was a mistake.

deedee he doesn't have to decare it in the register of members financial interests - details can be found here if you want to know what they DO have to declare though.

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmcode/1076/107604.htm