Ant & Dec, Davina McCall, Jeremy Paxman, David Beckham.. Tax Avoidance 700 million...

[gluteustothemaximus]

Around 1400 celebrities owe £700 million in tax, due to a tax avoidance scheme.

Apologies for the fail link www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4561410/Celebrities-lose-bid-overturn-700million-tax-bill.html

It's not really an AIBU. But I would like HMRC and the government to clamp down more on this especially the tories themselves and their rich friends

Lots of the people involved regularly beg the great unwashed to donate to charities that they are doing a joly with all while boosting their profile.

Scum.

I have had a crush on Paxman since my 20s. Then I found out he is a Tory and now a tax avoider.

I have a signed photo in my basement. It may be burned soon.

Jeremy, how could you?

AIBU to wish they'd list all 1400 celebs??!!

Just so I know which ones have gone down in my estimation now...

I wonder how many people have had their benefits removed or reduced, and if that (and the cost of doing it) is anywhere near £700,000,000

Presumably the HMRC are clamping down more on creative tax avoidance schemes, given that this scheme has been found to be not permitted?

(Haven't read the DM link)

How can schemes exist? Because governments want to encourage investment in certain areas, so give them tax breaks. Which then highly skilled tax specialists exploit. So the easiest way to not have them exploited is not to create them in the first place, or pay HMRC people high enough to get the really good tax specialists working for the HMRC not on the other side.

But: tax avoidance isn't illegal (tax evasion is). Anyone who invests in an ISA is involved in tax avoidance. So then tax avoidance is on a line, and you can put the break between what is acceptable and what isn't morally anywhere you like really.

People will always find loopholes, hopefully HMRC will recover the money.

Millions I would imagine tax advantage of tax things like this, from the everyday self employed person to celebrities.

This just proves how widespread tax avoidance is, by individuals as well as by the oft quoted big names like Amazon, Starbucks etc. Plenty of self employed people will be creatively using dividends to pretend that they only earn £12k pa.

Some years ago, possibly when Amazon or Starbucks hit the headlines, Katie Melua stood up and said how she was proud to pay all taxes and not engage in any tax avoidance schemes. Her accountant had to take her aside and say, well actually, she did avoid tax.

www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/12/katie-melua-clueless-liberty-tax-avoidance-scheme

I'm sure information about who else is at is either already out there, or will be available by FoI request?

I agree with Rainbows.

At some stage or another most people will have been offered the opportunity to minimise the tax they pay, whether that's by childcare vouchers or paying cash in hand or whatever.

I doubt the celebrities thought they were doing anything illegal.

It's a joke that the Queen gives people like this Honours.

If you take childcare vouchers in lieu of gross income and use them to pay for childcare then you are using the scheme exactly as it's intended and have done absolutely nothing wrong. If you pay someone cash in hand in return for a lower cost then you are aiding and abetting their tax evasion. This scheme was (mis-)sold as legal tax avoidance but was always aimed at exploiting a loophole - the celebrities would have known that it was a "dodge", even though they didn't know it was actually illegal evasion.

There's a huge difference between using legitimate, promoted, small scale avoidance techniques like childcare vouchers or ISAs and agressive tax avoidance like setting up fake loans to deliberately loss making enterprises.

The Government actually spends money telling people to use childcare vouchers. I don't see TV ads for Ingenious or any other hooky scheme. Not at all comparable.

Wasn't it Chris Moyles who claimed he was a second hand car salesman? There is a world of difference between that and using ISAs

Indeed he did along with 'several other celebrities, 450 City fund managers and other high earners'

The accountants thinking up these kind of schemes need to be struck off and stripped of their assets, not rewarded with presumably enormous salaries and bonuses.

Yes, sorry, I just want to make it clear that I think childcare vouchers are a great thing and of course are completely legal. As are ISAs etc.

Paying cash in hand is not good but something that a lot of people think is okay.

My point was that these are all common ways people reduce their tax burden - most people want to pay less tax. Celebrities doing the same shouldn't result in them being called scum unless you are going to call other people scum who do other dodgy tax reducing things - like cash in hand.

Plenty of self employed people will be creatively using dividends to pretend that they only earn £12k pa.

Utter rubbish. If you are self employed you pay tax under sole trade rules via self assessment and not through a limited company. You can't pay yourself dividends.
Dividends are declarable on tax returns and will be taxed if more than £5k

Actually in a small business, accepting cash payments is no problem, and no more means someone's on the fiddle than you paying cash in tesco's does.
It's people who don't issue an invoice, and don't want to give a receipt, they're the ones doing stuff " off the books"