To think its fine for Bono to put his money in offshore tax havens while...

[MelodyvonPeterswald]

he encourages the rest of us ordinary mortals to do more to alleviate poverty and debt. This man deserves to be canonised.

I cannot bear the hypocritical arse!

They all do..........cheeky fuckers!

By "canonised", do you mean shot with a cannon?

If so, YANBU.

Just heard the latest about actors in Mrs Brown's Boys getting their "fees" (rather than salaries) paid via companies based in Mauritius who then "loan" the actors hundreds of thousands of pounds completely tax free.. So inspiring to learn how BBC license payers' money is being used.

Lewis Hamilton gets £3.3 million for sitting on the airport tarmac on the Isle of Man in his private leisure jet for an hour with Nicole Shitsinger. Which must be lovely for Manx pensioners facing social care cuts to know about.

Just as sickening as Lewis Hamilton and his private jet VAT refund, enabled by the Isle of Man changing their laws to facilitate it according to R4 news...

Ah Lineys, you beat me to it

lineys Can you explain that one to me

You're kidding yourself if you think Lewis Hamilton is au fait with the finer points of VAT legislation. He has advisors and accountants. Nothing he is doing is illegal. Yes there are loopholes which clever people know what to exploit, but if someone told you that you could get £3.5 million for a quick flight to the Isle of Man and back, you'd do it, wouldn't you???

As for the Mrs Brown actors well yes, on the face of it, it sounds dodgy. But the frothing about them avoiding income tax and National Insurance - they're IRISH! They wouldn't be paying HMRC anything anyway.

they are all at it - no need to single him out

Irish people who live and work in the UK for UK companies would pay HMRC apart from for these avoidance schemes.

He's always been a hypocritical twat.

Duchy of Lancaster is at it too..

As would any nationalities - I mention Irish people in relation to an earlier post.

The nationality of the Irish actors is irrelevant. They worked in the UK and therefore their fees were paid by the production company to them based on that.

Also, it’s not the BBC paying them, it’s the production company (owned by Brendan Carroll).

Under the outsourcing rules forced on the BBC they have to pay production companies to produce programmes

walking dead you beat me to it- was going to say they win Cheeky Fuckers award of the day!

The queen has been at it too

Duchess - as far as I know (and I'm not an expert on the comings and goings of the O'Caroll family) they are permanently resident in the Irish republic. The tv show is filmed in Glasgow. The production company is British, but if I was Irish and living in Dublin and working for M&S or some other british company, i'd be paying my tax to the Irish revenue, not HMRC.

I don’t agree with it, but what can anyone do? The EU closed down loopholes in Ireland which allowed Apple to not pay millions of pounds in tax. Great, but then Apple just moved their money to another country that allows them to avoid tax.

Lewis Hamilton lives in Monaco anyway so he won’t pay tax to the UK.

Poppy I'd imagine it being a fee rather than a salary that makes them free of NI and Tax. Being Irish hasn't saved me from having to pay either...

Bono has form for this already, when Ireland capped the amount of tax-free earnings artists could have, they decided to base their operations in Netherlands, IIRC. Apparently paying tax is for stupid people: www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/15/bono-defends-u2-corporation-tax-arrangements

I feel hugely unsurprised by any of these revelations. I think there's a point of wealth that people hit that they no longer need to worry about playing by the books, they just can afford to hire someone to cook them in ways that aren't technically illegal. Hugely immoral though, imo.

And you know, whatever the ins and outs of tax laws are, the one thing which is true is that it's really complicated. Which is why people pay accountants to make sure they do things correctly. Don't get angry at the people avoiding tax, get angry that the system isn't quick enough to close loopholes.

Anyone who saves in an ISA rather than in a standard savings account is avoiding tax.

Poppy, afaik, they would still pay tax to HMRC. It's not uncommon for people to live in Ireland and work in NI, or vice versa. You pay tax on your earnings in the country where you earn them, then complete a self-assessment in the country you reside. borderpeople.info/a-z/taxation.html

At least some of the O'Carroll family live in Donegal and are from NI, so I'm sure the weren't completely green about how it works, but in the grand scheme of things, the amounts they buried is feck all compared to others.

At the end of the day, it's not illegal. If the government was that bothered they'd close the loopholes.

Personally I think we'd be better off if people stopped paying Cash in Hand to millions of tradesmen every week....

Yes if they are resident in Ireland then the pay (or don't in reality) their taxes to the Revenue Commisioners. Some double taxation malarkey (of which I have great understanding. Honest.)

All above board and legal. But it's one hell of a purposeful effort to make sure they all add far more to their quite substantial wealth isn't it.

It's interesting that it's Mrs Brown's Boys that's getting a lot more attention than the Queen (and I think Brendan O'Carroll is an utter toe rag). I can't decide if that's because not many are surprised about the Queen or because it's so shocking they get paid so much for utter drivel as Mrs Brown's Boys

Bono's a DICK