David Cameron has to resign.

[PirateSmile]

If there is any evidence he has had even one penny of benefit from his father's dodgy tax arrangement, surely Cameron has to go?
He's saying 'it's a private matter' whilst presumably working on his notes for next month's conference on cracking down on such tax scams. You really couldn't make it up. He will no doubt plead ignorance but that's no defence. He is the PM. He should know he's benefiting from is essentially large scale fraud.
Are we really going to let him get away with this?

Not sure Jimmy Carr agrees
newsthump.com/2016/04/06/cameron-family-tax-affairs-morally-wrong-claims-jimmy-carr/

Anyone who invests in an ISA or a pension is engaging in a form of tax avoidance.

Anyone who invests in an ISA or a pension is engaging in a form of tax avoidance.

There is a huge difference both morally and legally between using tax efficient investment structures specifically written into domestic legislation and intended for that purpose and exploiting tax loopholes and opaque offshore vehicles, often in ways that are questionably legal.

Governments quite legitimately use tax policy to encourage specific behaviour, like putting money in pension schemes. They don't specifically write loopholes into legislation (at least one would hope not).

grumpy
Tax incentives are not tax avoidance. This ISA/pension nonsense keeps being trotted out but it's misguided.
It's an attempt to minimise.
Don't fall for it eh?

'Anyone who invests in an ISA or a pension is engaging in a form of tax avoidance'
you can invest up to 15k in an account which is in your name and in so doing will not pay tax on the interest earned of around £150 per year, so you'll be ......what £30 a year better off?

Not really comparable to hiding unlimited and unknown amounts of money in an offshore account is it

howmany, if the firm isn't paying corporation tax then there is more money available to distribute as dividends to shareholders.

ISAs are tax incentives to encourage people to save a limited sum.
ISA is not tax avoidance.

Be sensible.

ISAs do not justify blairemore holdings not paying a penny in uk tax for 30 years.

The fund didn't belong to Cameron's dad. His dad worked as an investment manager, who, in the early 80's set up an offshore fund. People brought shares and his dad invested the money to generate a return for the investors. His earnings was a % of the returns (ie the fees paid to fund managers). This is no different from any of the funds that people invest their pensions or ISA's in.
Most uk funds pay no UK tax anyway here, so the tax impact is minimal if anything. One of the benefits of an offshore fund is to attract international investors and the lack of reporting requirements can make it a lot less onerous for the fund managers and you don't necessarily need UK authority oversight.
Cameron bought shares in the fund, received dividends (and paid tax) and then sold them at a profit. No CGT was due.
There has been no loss to the UK treasury on any of these transactions.

Off shore is attractive because of its lack of reporting?
And lack of authority oversight?

Why does the money need less oversight and reporting requirements? What's wrong with it?

candy Nothing wrong with it. UK investment trusts have to follow specific rules on reporting, fees etc. Offshore funds don't. These are designed to protect investors, but some investors don't care or want the oversight. You are also more likely to get more sophisticated investors.

Oversight does not, of course, mean things are risk free. Bernie Madoff's funds were regulated by the US authorities and BCCI had a valid banking licence.

I think it's nuts to rant about DC - I bet most people with accumulated wealth ie not making it from a business or salary, is stashing it overseas.

Possibly Tony Blair's father (I mean he went to the most expensive private school in Scotland), Harriet Harman went to St Paul's Girls schools - were they actually earning that amount or were they making interest on savings abroad? Boris Johnson's family - they really have all their wealth in the UK?
My friend stuck her DM's savings off shore so she didn't have to pay care home fees. It's rife.

hazy it's not something to brag about.
Paying care home fees is very depressing but as a family who does have a relative in a care home who had to sell her house and use the money to pay the £2000 a month fees, I think that's pretty shit thing to do. How did they get away with that? No questions asked about where capital had disappeared to?
To get funding towards support you have to have less than £23K in savings.
If everyone did that and claimed for everything, that would be wrong wouldn't it? So it's also wrong for your friend to do it hazy
Let's hope she can't be identified through you hey?

A morality system based on I'm probably behaving reasonably if I can find a high profile person more crooked than me is not sustainable in the long term.

howmany you said
Hang on I think I get it. Someone makes a ton of money that would attract income tax. They ship it off to Panama and instead pay themselves and dividend tax, which is less than income tax and probably was even more so in 2010. So technically they do pay tax, but at a lower rate

This is inaccurate and a misunderstanding of how investment vehicles work.
Investors do not "ship money off to Panama". They buy units in a fund which, they hope, will be invested in such a way as to create income. That income is distributed and is taxable as income in the hands of the investor wherever they may be domicile for tax purposes. So DC's return was taxed at his marginal rate of income tax. Rates of corporation tax are irrelevant. When he sold the units, he might have been liable for capital gains tax if the difference between purchase and sale was above the nil rate band. It was not so he didn't.

Funny how he managed to avoid the CGT though.

Funny how he managed to avoid the CGT though.

Well, you get £11000 per year per person as an allowance now, I don't remember what it was back in 2010, and that's on the actual gain from purchase, not the current value. Presumably he didn't avoid the CGT, the shares just didn't gain enough capital value to incur any?

Rates of corporation tax are irrelevant.

They are certainly not irrelevant. Dividends are paid from profits AFTER taxation, so although the investor is only taxed on their own dividend, the same % profit dividend will be higher from a company in a low tax regime. This also affects the share value, resulting in s higher capital gain.

tennessee exactly. It's that kind of snarky ill informed comment (by candycane) that is fuelling the confected outrage fomented only for political gain . Yes let's have a debate about tax laws, let's even call out hypocrisy where it exists. But let's not make silly slurs based on misinformation, misunderstanding or ignorance. It does no one any favours