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The Paradise Papers


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7 minutes ago, darrenm said:

jeremy-corbyn.jpg

e4mnf3nde6stmnau4fw05qproqcbh2mk-xlarge.

 

You've fair more faith in them than I would. Even if you're their biggest fan the task to fix taxation is enormous. If nothing else there's a bloody industry founded on it more or less.

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If you live in a world where richer get rich, poor gets screwed and you need to be immoral and basically  do things you shouldn't or keep quiet about these things to get ahead in life you can easily become depressed. As kids we were told we should work, hard, keep out of trouble and you will be ok.  To an extent that is the case,  we all work hard, most have roofs over the heads that they worked for and food on the table and should be great fuel but we live in a society determined to keep us in debt. We work likes dogs, out the house 10-12 hours a day, pay our taxes, dont break the law, generally honest and yet you never rise beyond a certain point. The rich are just changing the laws to suit their financial position. 

The more I hear of things like this amd what the world has become with sexualisation of tv, paedoes and pervs in hollywood the more I am convinced the end of days could be within our lifetime. The bible predicts the world would become like this. (yes i appreciate there is a lot of non believers so you don't need to comment on that part of the post. )

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1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

 

If you live in a world where richer get rich, poor gets screwed and you need to be immoral and basically  do things you shouldn't or keep quiet about these things to get ahead in life you can easily become depressed. As kids we were told we should work, hard, keep out of trouble and you will be ok.  To an extent that is the case,  we all work hard, most have roofs over the heads that they worked for and food on the table and should be great fuel but we live in a society determined to keep us in debt. We work likes dogs, out the house 10-12 hours a day, pay our taxes, dont break the law, generally honest and yet you never rise beyond a certain point. The rich are just changing the laws to suit their financial position. 

The more I hear of things like this amd what the world has become with sexualisation of tv, paedoes and pervs in hollywood the more I am convinced the end of days could be within our lifetime. The bible predicts the world would become like this. (yes i appreciate there is a lot of non believers so you don't need to comment on that part of the post. )

I can do you a killer deal on a job lot of tin foil if you are interested. No VAT obviously...

In the event of the 4 horses of the apocalypse arriving (they may or may not charter Lewis Hamilton’s jet) I guarantee a full refund.

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21 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

I can do you a killer deal on a job lot of tin foil if you are interested. No VAT obviously...

In the event of the 4 hordes of the apocalypse arriving (they may or may not charter Lewis Hamilton’s jet) I guarantee a full refund.

I was awaiting one of your wise cracks hence the no need to comment on that part. bloody mods skiving:mrgreen:

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3 hours ago, TrentVilla said:

Well there was an interesting piece re Hamilton his jet and the Isle of Man last night.

The rule underwhich he reclaimed the VAT on the aircraft was such that it excluded the use of the jet for personal activity. It’s quite clear from social media that he uses it for private activity. 

They also showed documents that showed the IoM had in other cases knowingly given such rebates when they shouldn’t have done so. They have as a result of this leak called in the UK tax authorities to review.

So whole not illegal it’s clear that some immoral activity has been occurring which could and should be stopped through better governance and the application of the current rules.

But as you say most of what is happening isn’t illegal so without changes to statute things won’t change especially when there is no political will to change things due to one form of self interest or other.

I think the only real change from things like this will come from public shaming as happened with Jimmy Carr.

It is though like putting a plaster on a bucket with no base.

 

I don't think that Panorama had it right last night.  My understanding is that an element of private use does not automatically completely preclude the reclaiming of VAT.  There was also another completely wrong bit, where they were talking about the IOM government in relation to Apple.  There's no party system on the IOM, so you can't have a complete change if there was no confidence in one party like there is in the UK.

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3 hours ago, darrenm said:

It's all perfectly legal. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

It just shows how much we need a different government.

 

You obviously have no idea just how much anti-avoidance legislation has come into being in the last 10 years.  Far, far more than in the ten years before that.

There's been the disguised remuneration legislation, the introduction of GAAR, Accelerated Payment Notices, offshore intermediaries legislation, onshore intermediaries legislation, a crack down on SDLT schemes, the 2019 loan charge, DOTAS, POTAS and now the deal with all of the professional accountancy bodies (ICAEW, ACCA etc) that has made them change their professional rules so that it's against their conduct regs to advise on aggressive avoidance.  I can name dozens and dozens of schemes that have been shut down by the above, and I know of lots of people who have for example, put their income through Mauritius in order to extract loans, and have come a massive cropper as a result of pnealties and interest.

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12 minutes ago, Risso said:

 

I don't think that Panorama had it right last night.  My understanding is that an element of private use does not automatically completely preclude the reclaiming of VAT.  There was also another completely wrong bit, where they were talking about the IOM government in relation to Apple.  There's no party system on the IOM, so you can't have a complete change if there was no confidence in one party like there is in the UK.

 I didn’t see the part re Apple so can’t comment.

You would have far better knowledge than me re the issue of private use and jets/VAT (you’ve probably got one!) but that seemed to be the key element of the entire piece on Panorama, I’d be amazed if they have got that wrong. 

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I wouldn’t. They seemed more interested in dramatic shots of the reporter pretending he was in Mission Impossible than accurately reporting the truth. In reality, BBC “talent” is absolutely awash with avoidance in the form of PSCs.

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2 hours ago, Risso said:

 

You obviously have no idea just how much anti-avoidance legislation has come into being in the last 10 years.  Far, far more than in the ten years before that.

There's been the disguised remuneration legislation, the introduction of GAAR, Accelerated Payment Notices, offshore intermediaries legislation, onshore intermediaries legislation, a crack down on SDLT schemes, the 2019 loan charge, DOTAS, POTAS and now the deal with all of the professional accountancy bodies (ICAEW, ACCA etc) that has made them change their professional rules so that it's against their conduct regs to advise on aggressive avoidance.  I can name dozens and dozens of schemes that have been shut down by the above, and I know of lots of people who have for example, put their income through Mauritius in order to extract loans, and have come a massive cropper as a result of pnealties and interest.

I don't, but how does that affect what I said?

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4 hours ago, Risso said:

 

You obviously have no idea just how much anti-avoidance legislation has come into being in the last 10 years.  Far, far more than in the ten years before that.

There's been the disguised remuneration legislation, the introduction of GAAR, Accelerated Payment Notices, offshore intermediaries legislation, onshore intermediaries legislation, a crack down on SDLT schemes, the 2019 loan charge, DOTAS, POTAS and now the deal with all of the professional accountancy bodies (ICAEW, ACCA etc) that has made them change their professional rules so that it's against their conduct regs to advise on aggressive avoidance.  I can name dozens and dozens of schemes that have been shut down by the above, and I know of lots of people who have for example, put their income through Mauritius in order to extract loans, and have come a massive cropper as a result of pnealties and interest.

My understanding is that the "leasing agreement" stated he would be using the jet for 80 hours per month privately and 160 hours per month for business.  On that basis he would've been able to reclaim 2/3 of the VAT charged at import.  "He" managed to get a 100% refund on the import duty and it's that, combined with the structure that facilitated it all, that has raised a red (as opposed to checkered) flag.

_98646466_lewis_vat_640-nc.png

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5 hours ago, Risso said:

I wouldn’t. They seemed more interested in dramatic shots of the reporter pretending he was in Mission Impossible than accurately reporting the truth. In reality, BBC “talent” is absolutely awash with avoidance in the form of PSCs.

Yes that’s undoubtably true re PSC’s.

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What is about money that turn people into scummy bastards?  This sort of shit needs to be stopped - and the British lawyer highlighted is exactly the kind of vermin that should be locked away for life IMO.

 

 

Paradise Papers: UK millionaires 'using offshore tax avoidance schemes'

More than 100 UK millionaires have been identified as tax dodgers after hiding their wealth using offshore schemes.

...

 

They were set up by James O'Toole, a British lawyer who has made his own fortune by advising the wealthy how to dodge tax.

The documents show that Mr O'Toole has personally used a similar type of tax avoidance scheme to his clients.

He was an "investment advisor" to a Mauritian company which owns his mansion in Northumberland.

He has also not owned two Aston Martins, a BMW, a Range Rover, luxury watches including a Rolex, and a Harley Davidson motorbike - which were all kept at his home.

 

(Link:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41893764)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bad Appleby

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FEW NAMES crop up quite as frequently in the Paradise Papers as those of the world’s major accountancy firms. Often they appear in connection with tax avoidances schemes devised some time after famous scandals like those of Vodafone, Starbucks and “LuxLeaks” might have been expected to change their behaviour. Analysis by the Eye suggests the “Big 4” – EY, PwC, KPMG and Deloitte – held hundreds of business relationships with clients of law firm Appleby in the years up to 2015.

Behind most of the reported VAT avoidance schemes run out of the Isle of Man, including Lewis Hamilton’s, was EY, formerly known as Ernst & Young. It wasn’t too fussy about who it chose to help dodge tax, either. The first of what were then the “Big Five” beancounting outfits into Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union, EY is still evidently doing sterling work keeping the oligarchs happy.

When Vladimir Putin’s ally, the shopping centre tycoon God Nisanov, sought to acquire an Airbus A318 jet through an Isle of Man company owned by his associates, internal Appleby emails revealed “EY Moscow as the introducing party” and explained the source of Nisanov’s fortunes. “Given the family connection to God Nisanov,” the lawyers duly noted, “…it is evident that this is the source of wealth for the purchase of the aircraft.” EY duly saved the oligarch millions in VAT.

Money-laundering vehicle of choice
One presentation prepared by EY for a wealthy VAT dodger in October 2015 explained how the scheme could work. The buyer would acquire the jet through an Irish company that would provide “passenger transport services” to other companies owned by the same people, creating a commercial veneer that would allow for zero VAT. All was helpfully explained on slides under EY’s strapline “building a better working world”. How avoiding tax helps to do this was not explained.

EY was also behind a scheme through which another wealthy Russian who made his money in the railway business, Yury Korotchenko, tax-efficiently bought a £13.5m G200 Gulfstream in 2012. Although there is no evidence the accountants knew of the source of Korotchenko’s funds, Appleby emails reveal the money emerged from an account at a Latvian bank held by a British “limited liability partnership”, Intertrade Continental LLP – the same kind of set-up previously exposed by the Eye as the money-laundering vehicle of choice.

At the time of the jet purchase, Intertrade Continental LLP filed accounts saying it was a “trade agent for industrial equipment” earning commission of £4,600 a year. It was owned by two Seychelles companies, Monohold AG and Intrahold AG, whose names will be familiar to Eye readers. They are straight out of the International Overseas Services network exposed in the Eye’s Where There’s Muck There’s Brass Plates special report in May 2013. Together, they jointly own around 600 further LLPs.

There was also plenty of work with Appleby clients for the world’s largest accountancy firm and engine of the “LuxLeaks” tax avoidance factory, PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm could also be found advising wealthy private jet tax dodgers. “Appleby are good friends of ours,” wrote one of PwC’s Isle of Man tax directors to a colleague in PwC Moscow’s “private wealth services” division in 2013, after the latter had approached the lawyers with “several potential clients, who consider using IoM for their aircraft structures”.

‘A lively biography’
One PwC client was oligarch turned MP Vitaly Malkin. “Also sometimes we ask PWC for their professional tax advisers,” came the reply of the oligarch’s lackey to Appleby’s request for details of Malkin’s money. After some digging, Appleby hit on a snag: “Like many Russian billionaires,” reads an internal email, “Mr Malkin has a lively biography” including, according to Malkin’s client file, “close connections to the Kremlin… alleged involvement in criminal activities [and] misappropriate allocation of funds”.

This stark assessment was based on Canadian federal court documents stating how, during the fall of Soviet communism, Malkin was alleged to have siphoned $48m from a debt-reduction deal with Angola, while a visa officer told the court how Malkin “had used profits from organised crime to subvert the democratic process in Russia” in a bid to swing the elections in favour of Boris Yeltsin. When Appleby raised these “minor points” with Malkin’s representative, she dismissed them as “mean comments” unworthy of attention. They certainly didn’t phase PwC.

As LuxLeaks showed, however, PwC’s real specialism is in the huge corporate tax scheme. No part of the world is too poor to be exploited by their tax planners. So when India’s GMR Group bought half of a Dutch power company in 2010, it did so on the strength of PwC’s tax advice, said Appleby, “via a Maltese company wholly owned by an IoM company, in turn wholly owned by a Mauritus [sic] company which is owned by the Indian company”. When the interest was later sold, the gain will have escaped the clutches of the Indian taxman.

Closer to home, PwC used a similarly huge “tax structure”, involving half a dozen Luxembourg companies, for the Blackstone private equity group’s £300m re-financing of its investment in the Chiswick Park office complex in 2013. All this from the firm whose head UK tax partner, Kevin Nicholson, told parliament in 2013: “We are not in the business of selling schemes.”

Offshore trebles all round
Deloitte, meanwhile, could be found advising multinationals including Holidaybreak and engineering group Amec Foster Wheeler on rearranging their finances offshore to take advantage of tax law changes in 2012 that they had loudly cheer-led. “We do have a good news story now,” Deloitte’s senior tax partner, Bill Dodwell, said at the time. “We can indeed compete with the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland.” As the Paradise Papers show, it is indeed now offshore trebles all round.

In an “asset and wealth management” report for its rich clients last month, PwC speculated that: “Being viewed as not paying a fair share of tax or using questionable tax havens will [soon] be unacceptable.” But there is little sign that the Big 4 beancounters are about to walk away from them and the fat fees they pay. Just how fat was revealed in a proposal for advice from PwC’s London office to Allied Irish Bank in 2013: “Our hourly charge-out rates are as follows: partner – £650; director – £570; senior manager – £440; manager – £370; senior associate – £310; associate – £110”. As it is the same top beancounters to whom governments turn to for advice on handling tax havens, they’ll be playing the great offshore game for some time yet.

    Private Eye had access to the 13 million documents of the Paradise Papers, obtained by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and turned into a worldwide exposé by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

 

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I'm not sure why it should come as a shock to anybody that the biggest firms of accountants try to save their clients as much tax as possible.  PwC and others don't sell schemes, which their partner is correctly quoted as saying in that article, but they do look at their individual clients' circumstances and look to reduce their tax bill using existing legislation.  The trouble is, the average person in the street isn't aware as to just how overly complicated tax legislation is, and just sees that their salary is subject to PAYE and so everybody should "pay their fair share".

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17 minutes ago, Risso said:

I'm not sure why it should come as a shock to anybody that the biggest firms of accountants try to save their clients as much tax as possible.  PwC and others don't sell schemes, which their partner is correctly quoted as saying in that article, but they do look at their individual clients' circumstances and look to reduce their tax bill using existing legislation.  The trouble is, the average person in the street isn't aware as to just how overly complicated tax legislation is, and just sees that their salary is subject to PAYE and so everybody should "pay their fair share".

I think all anybody wants is that people are fair.

When everyone can see the NHS falling to it's knees, infrastructure becoming outdated, pay freezes and general austerity because no one supposedly has any money - then to the people who make up these businesses and make them work and pay their taxes, then they have every right to be **** off with the middle aged, upper management bodies who consciously make these decisions to re-enforce the austerity "because they can".  

Most of the problem is that people legitimise these things, making them ok.  

I've said before, but everyone who can, will get away with it, and whilst these loop-holes exist, then they will continue to conjure up ways of doing it.  

Just don't expect "normal" working people to appreciate this, when there's no trickle down benefit to them or their families. 

"Good on Starbucks!" - yea, no. 

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2 minutes ago, Xann said:

When you say people, you mean parasite scum.

Parasite scum are people too! 

Imagine though, choosing a career within it.  Your kid self would kick the shit out of you :lol: 

Edited by lapal_fan
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19 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

I think all anybody wants is that people are fair.

When everyone can see the NHS falling to it's knees, infrastructure becoming outdated, pay freezes and general austerity because no one supposedly has any money - then to the people who make up these businesses and make them work and pay their taxes, then they have every right to be **** off with the middle aged, upper management bodies who consciously make these decisions to re-enforce the austerity "because they can".  

Most of the problem is that people legitimise these things, making them ok.  

I've said before, but everyone who can, will get away with it, and whilst these loop-holes exist, then they will continue to conjure up ways of doing it.  

Just don't expect "normal" working people to appreciate this, when there's no trickle down benefit to them or their families. 

"Good on Starbucks!" - yea, no. 

This. I don't hate the players, just the game.

But you can see why this winds people up:

Lewis-Hamilton-389101.jpg

If he paid the correct tax on his private plane then that's £3.3m that could be given to children's charities, so working people don't have to give as much. Then he has the audacity to give away a signed pair of used trainers as a charity auction.

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