Tax exiles

[kerstina]

Can anyone tell me what the Con-Dems policy on tax evaders who choose to leave this country is ? I know the Labour party were planning to take steps to make them pay. I am talking about the likes of Tracy Enim, Phil Collins ,Philip Green ,Lewis Hamilton and Michael Caine.

Ok so Tracey Enim was threatening to leave if Labour got back in so is probably still here . She went to Art college without having to pay tuition fees but now she begrudges paying some of her wealth back into our society.These people are awful role models in my opinion.

If you mean people who live overseas to take advantage of 'non-domiciled' status for tax reasons then I can't see it being left as is - for purely political reasons rather than to close the deficit. Tax evasion has already been mentioned by George Osborne as an area to be tackled & the Lib-Dems are keen to add tax-avoidance schemes to the list.

BTW... Tracey Emin supports various charities voluntarily so we can admire her for that. If she's paying all the tax due under the current rules then she's obeying the law. If the law still needs to be tightened that's a different matter.

They are going to try and crack down on tax evasion but then so did Labour and in the end they the extra cost of chasing tax evaders meant that they got very little revenue from reducing tax evasion.

I think they are also going to look at closing loopholes in the tax system to reduce tax aviodance. Their first step was to increase capital gains tax and other methods of tax avoidance are being looked at.

Reducing the tax-exempt ceiling for private pension contributions is another tax-avoidance counter-measure.

The Government cannot tax anybody who has totally left the country OP so nothing will be done about people who retire/flee overseas. I think the Government will look at increasing the amount of tax that non-doms pay.

What's your concern here? Leaving aside the rules on non doms which has someone else has already said is a political bullet they may dodge, there is already a lot of legislation Eg it's harder than you think to show you are a tax exile- hmrc fought and won cases on recently and have revised their advice on this area
You can't easily leave UK sell stuff and then hope to come back. And if you want to "hide"things offshore that too is taxable. So actually it's quite hard to "avoid" UK tax as opposed to evade (ie actually do things outside the law). Therefore it's not as cheap or easy as you might think to move away
Due To what is already In the law- If gov is serious about cutting down on this area they don't need more law, they need more resource at hmrc.

I find it more of a mystery as to why emin is worth so much

I think non-dom ought to pay more tax. I also think the stamp rules should be changed to prevent non-doms buying property in the UK via off-shore trusts/ off-shore companies thereby paying no stamp duty.

I agree PelvicFloortrauma it seems to me that very rich people just find the loop holes to avoid paying tax. Philip Green is my case in point at the moment.
I think if everything is fair and these very rich people put more back into society people would be more accepting of having to take all these austerity measures we are constantly being told about.

Very rich people often put more back into society than we appreciate. People like Philip Green who run large commercial organisations, for example, employ thousands directly and provide indirect employment for suppliers and contractors. Others donate a lot to charity or set up foundations. There is an increasingly small number of 'Bertie Wooster' type people that inherit vast wealth & do nothing with it - but inheritance tax means we get a share of that when they die.

I appreciate people like Jamie Oliver i think he is fantastic and puts some much of himself into improving the lives of others and not just money.
James Blunt is another who donates lots to help the heroes but he lives in Ibiza hope it is not just for tax reasons.

Chil1234, according to Dispatches on tonight Sir Phillip Green does not own TopShop or BHS , it is under a company called Tabitha Ltd based in tax haven of Jersey and his wife is the owner. Mrs.Green was paid the largest ever corporate dividend payment totalling £1.2 billion pounds, a tax saving of £285 million pounds. Mind boggling is'nt it.

If people leave, sell their UK assets and do not earn in this country and do not spend more than a a few months in the UK per year there is nothing the UK can do. You pay income tax and capital gains tax in the country you are resident in because of double taxation treaties.

Non Doms is a different issue.

I'm not at all surprised that Sir Philip Green structures his companies in order to pay as little tax as possible whilst staying within the law. I organise my rather more limited finances with exactly the same objective.... and can I recommend Martin Lewis' excellent 'moneysavingexpert.com' site to point out how that can be acheived?

If the rules are bad, change the rules. In the meantime, don't feign all this mock horror that someone will use the rules to their own advantage.

"Very rich people often put more back into society than we appreciate. People like Philip Green who run large commercial organisations, for example, employ thousands directly and provide indirect employment for suppliers and contractors. Others donate a lot to charity or set up foundations."

Hang on hang on, I give to charity, I've been known to do the odd bit of voluntary work. That does not mean that I am not liable for my tax bill.

He got a payment of £1.2 billion. His income tax revenue on that would have been half of the savings made in means testing child benefit.

Tax avoidance is simply a matter of law vs ethics. Exploiting loopholes does not make it right, just because it's legal.

Osborne seems very clear this week to brand benefit cheats as nothing more than muggers, and yet somehow this is all to be applauded because they employ people and do the odd benefit gig.

I shake my head in despair every day.

"Exploiting loopholes does not make it right, just because it's legal"

Legal means something is within the law. Tax avoidance is making the tax laws work in your favour. Ethics don't really come into it. No-one is ever suddenly seized by some moral compulsion to pay more tax than they've been asked for... don't care who they are.

Tax evasion is outside the law.. it's fraud.... and so if you get a bill for tax and simply refuse to pay it you are a criminal, no less. Benefit cheats, like tax evaders are acting fraudulently, outside the law and they are criminals.

Tax avoidance is perfectly legal and I have no problems with it. If I could find a way to pay less tax then I would and I don't think I would be alone . Tax evasion is what is wrong and what the Government is looking to reduce.

But the problem is, the more money you have, the more scope there is for tax avoidance.

The average paye employee has none such opportunity. Therefore, whilst legal, it's actually just another form of regressive taxation.

PAYE is just part and parcel of being a salaried employee. All very safe, neat and tidy. Go it alone as a sole trader or set up your own company and it's much higher risk but the scope for reassigning income/expenditure to make the most of tax allowances instantly improves.... even without large amounts of money at stake.

I'm impressed that Sir Philip Green can get out of £285m but anyone know how much he and his companies pay into the Exchequer?

I always laugh at people who object to tax avoidance as most of those who would be the first to reduce their tax bill if given the chance.

Very well said Fruitstick i agree entirely. Yes Chil1234 the rules are bad and i would like to see them changed. I would also love it if we could boycott all the peoples companies who have no ethics.
Am sorry to have missed dispatches it would have been interesting.

kerstina, according to Dispatches there are 70 tax havens around the world that were set up by Britain. Labour were about to introduce strict rules to stop companies from using tax havens for tax avoidance but recently the coalition scrapped this, I wonder why?
leandro, I am sure George Osbourne actually said he wanted to crackdown on "Offshore Tax Avoidance" not Evasion, I could be wrong and mis-heard. I wonder who he is specifically talking about, who are the tax avoiders he wants to crackdown on?

When Osborne talked about 'offshore tax avoidance' (and you didn't hear him wrong) I think he was referring to the highly organised schemes that exist. It wouldn't be all that difficult, from what I gather, to tweak the rules slightly and make them less lucrative and therefore less popular.

It does'nt sit well with me that the government employ Sir Green who is conciously using a tax avoidance scheme to benefit him & his family. The only reason I can think why he is employed as an advisor is that maybe Sir Green is a conservative party financial donor who would not like to see the rules changed re: tax avoidance.

I was thinking exactly the same as you Beaaware .I feel very uneasy about it. Not the sort of person you would want advising our government. Was not some of his advice to keep people the government owe money to waiting for longer . WTF ! Big Business should be kept well away from government.