£5k fine for giving 'friendly' money advice

[foreverastudent]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1271398/Big-brother-law-threatens-innocent-advice-Tax-chat-land-5-0 00-fine.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Saw this article today and am wondering how it might affect advice threads like this?

I guess we would all have to say
I am definitely not encouraging you to get an ISA as it would be wrong of me to show you how to save money

What you need to do is wade thorugh the Daily Mail shock-horror crap here, and actually find the nugget of truth concealed at the end.

Said nugget is here:
"An HMRC spokesman said: 'The draft legislation is not intended to target anyone giving fair and honest tax advice. "Deliberate wrongdoing" means the same as "fraud" or "dishonesty"."'Providing advice to clients about how they might best order their affairs, including tax planning and tax avoidance, cannot trigger the legislation in the absence of such fraud.'

It's only a proposal (draft legislation) and the opinion of an 'expert' - how can we trust the advice she gives us ???

Appears to be some knee-jerk, reactionary legislation where no-one has thought through the true implications of it. (hopefully!)

there has been alot of discussion in the accountancy/ tax industry press about this proposed legislation as it is so badly drafted that it would catch the type of situations that the daily mail is describing. The idea behind the legislation ie. targeted at deliberate wrongdoing is fair enough but because it catches so many innocent situations it is believed by many tax professionals that HMRC may use the legislation in order to increase their revenue in the current economic climate.