Jimmy Carr tax avoidance

[Poulay]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/9343267/Taxman-to-challenge-loophole-that-shelters-millions-for-Jimmy-Carr.html

Carr is an utter utter scumbag.

I work in the self-employed sector and have heard of these scams schemes, whereby supposedly you avoid tax by taking out a spurious 'loan' in order to reduce your income to zero. And I and all those I spoke to said 'this is not a legitimate scheme'.

I don't see any difference between this and fraud or theft. Long prison sentences are in order for these scum. He is using our fucking public services and refusing to pay for them.

People made a lot of noise about Red Ken getting paid through a limited company, but at least the limited company paid Corporation Tax. Carr is paying nothing.

How can he possibly think it is legitimate, legal or reasonable to say that his millions he earns are actually a loan on the never never? He is an intelligent man and should be made to pay the price of his actions. No fucking excuses.

fair play to him, would do exactly the same.

I watched jimmy Carr show last night and thought him quite humbling. Wanted to give him a cuddle and me a public sector worker! My gripe though is with mr Jeremy clarkson who writing in the sun today writes that j Carr is the most hard working person he knows and therefore should be able to pay what he likes. Funny that because I work extremely hard as a very busy staff nurse on a specialist stroke unit. I work 12 hr shifts, long stretches and night duty mixed with day shifts. Unfortunately I have no option with amount of tax I pay? Take note mr clarkson! Mind you he writes for the sun!!

Oh so bloody humbling, while he sleeps on a big pile of our taxes.

When is he going to pay them back?

Sinister - you have to put that song into context. Would you still be happily paying tax if you were paying 95% in tax?

So apparently Shiny Dave's dad made his money in..........tax havens! Oh the hypocrisy!

Really? Where have you got that information from?

It was in the Guardian ages ago.

"Thats what I want to know, they highlight a man in show business while turning a blind eye to all the party backers and businessmen/ bankers etc, Carr is just the tip of the iceburg and a very public fall guy."

Same here. Am I cynical to wonder why DC chose to berate a comedian with a reputation for being left wing rather than Gary Barlow or any of the others?

I thought Mr Cameron was a stockbroker?
I don't have an issue with tax avoidance but I do with hypocrisy. But your lefty media types have always been like this. Michael palin banged on in his diaries about how dreadful the tories were, how everyone shold be ponying up to pay for socialist utopia and the very next entry he's at his accountants setting up some tax mitigation scheme. And everyone thinks he's cuddly and marvellous.

I don't know where this idea that Jimmy Carr is left wing comes from - I've never seen any sign of it in his comedy.

I've seen him on Question Time and similar fora - the predictable Toynbee-esque stance taken on every possible issue.
Paying tax is a very good thing, according to JC - for other people.

Carr is a champagne socialist publicly because it makes his brand saleable to the right-on, e.g., the BBC. One assumes this is just an act however, certainly there is no evidence of this in his private life.

I doubt very much he is left-wing - his humour is very Jim Davidson, attacking vulnerable minorities. Racism, sexism and disablism are not characteristics of the left-wing. Nor plenty of right-wing people. of course, but overt sexism, racism and disablism is very un-left wing indeed.

and he's not a champagne socialist, whatever that is, his Daddy is a millionaire and he went to work for Shell when he left university. These are not traits of a socialist.

Could be economically left-wing but socially right-wing, edam.

Although he's clearly not either.

My partner told me yesterday that he likes Carr. I might have to dump him.

Those are exactly the traits of a champagne socialist edam.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_socialist

"Champagne socialist is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom. The phrase is used to describe self-identified socialists whose comfortable upper middle class lifestyles are perceived to be incompatible with their professed political convictions. "

To be fair edam, 'he's not a champagne socialist, whatever that is....' is not really a strong line!

leave the bastard, yellow.

No, poulet, champagne socialist does not = racist, sexist, disablist. Carr is the latter three. No-one's come up with any evidence that he's actually left wing. And whether he's left or right is a distraction, fact is he's a cheat who is dumping his responsibilities onto people who earn considerably less than him.

This thread is ridiculous. Perfectly ridiculous.

You may not like the tax avoidance scheme that Carr entered. But it is perfectly legal. If you wish to make it illegal, then lobby your MP for the government to legislate to close down this loophole.

Until then, you would be well advised to refrain from accusing him of any illegality. There are laws in place against defamation.

Yes, Jimmy Carr is definitely going to come onto mumsnet and find out who you are through your username and then sue you.

that is a thing that could happen.

It's isn't necessarily legal, Hopefully. Just hasn't been taken to court yet. Legality has not been established except in the opinion of people who stand to benefit from this con.

Clearly, Jimmy Carr is not actually taking a loan. It's his money. So it's clearly a a con and would probably be found to be illegal once HMRC had taken action.

And even if tax avoidance schemes are legal, that's only because the people who make the laws and the people who run them are wealthy and acting in their own self-interest. Benefits fiddling is illegal because people on benefits don't have access to expensive lawyers. Illegality or legality in this context is not decided on merit, it's decided on how much money you've got.

You may not like the tax avoidance scheme that Carr entered. But it is perfectly legal

Bollocks.

Carr is entitled to pay himself money via Jersey, Timbuktu, or that doesn't mean that the supposed 'loans' entitle him to avoid paying any income tax on the money.

If you wish to make it illegal, then lobby your MP for the government to legislate to close down this loophole.

There isn't any loophole. If I borrow £500k from my bank to buy a house, I don't pay any tax on that £500k, because it's not my money. It's the bank's money.

It would be ridiculous to tax borrowed money.

What's happened here is that Carr is claiming that money he has received, which is the income he has earned, is actually a loan.

Clearly this is a lie, since it his money, he is spending it on Bentleys and Range Rovers and is not going to pay it back. A loan that you do not pay back is not a loan at all.

What loophole would you want to close down?

All that needs to happen is for Carr to pay his taxes on the INCOME he has received via this scam.

Yellow rain coat - Gina Ford did just that, it may surprise you to know

Like it or not, it is currently legal. There is no law that recharacterises loans as income. You seem to think that the underlying characteristic of the loans received is that they are income, and I would not disagree with you. But this is currently perfectly legal and I cannot (as a practitioner) think of how this scheme can be successfully challenged in law.

The whole point of the tax avoidance disclosure law is to notify HMRC so that they could get the legal/drafting wheels in motion. Just because HMRC is incompetent does not mean that Jimmy Carr is acting unlawfully.

You can't think of how it can be challenged? www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/11/schedule/2/enacted

That legislation catches employment income. Jimmy Carr is self-employed. If you try to use that legislation to catch Jimmy Carr you'll be laughed out of court.