If you are rich ...

you don't have to pay tax.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41876942

I find it absolutely disgusting that the queen has had her hand in Brighthouse.

karlypants wrote:I find it absolutely disgusting that the queen has had her hand in Brighthouse.

Mind you,she got a nice kitchen table at reasonable terms.

There'll be a few red faces after that broadcast!!

Wait until Bredders watches it! It's Guy Fawkes day today - but I think we are in for a few more fireworks!

rammywhite wrote:Wait until Bredders watches it! It's Guy Fawkes day today - but I think we are in for a few more fireworks!

Breadman will be in it.  

His secrets will be exposed.

You won't find my name in there anywhere.

All my personal wealth's in the wife's name. 

All eighty four quid of it.

Anyroad, this bit's quite interesting:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-associate

It's going to be a bit of an eye opener trawling through this. Amazing what you can find under a rock.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41883472

and not a word from the Tories.

The latest ones with their greedy snouts in the trough are from Mrs Brown's boys.
Not so funny any more Mrs Brown!!

xmiles wrote:you don't have to pay tax.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41876942

If folk invest their money in offshore banks, they may do so to get a better interest rate on their investment. If that money was invested in the UK they'd have to pay tax on the interest it earned at the year end. Similarly, they would also have to pay tax to the country where the offshore investment was made - but some countries are tax free so technically they are paying tax on their interest at 0% (it is argued)
That means that offshore investment means no income for HMRC which is why people are bitching about it. It's a bit like buying property abroad - no benefit for the UK in terms of tax e.g. CGT.

However, if the offshore investors ever want to bring back their money to the UK, they would then have to pay tax to the UK Government.
In this sense it could be viewed as deferring their tax bill. They could of course, decide not to bring their money back at all ever.
The thing is though that it's their money and in one sense it's morally no worse than going abroad for a holiday and spending your money there or buying a property abroad which can be later sold at a higher value. 
Seeing that every pension scheme including the state pension scheme, every bank deposit, every UK based investment fund that we Brits put money into is largely invested abroad for the very same purpose i.e. to make a profit for us and for the schemes we are signed up to. And just like the offshore investors, we pay tax on our share of the profit when we draw it down in the UK. It could reasonably be argued that everyone with a pension, mortgage or savings account is as equally guilty of avoiding UK tax as the offshore investors in question. 
We live in a globalised economy whether we like it or not and everyone is involved.

There's a qualitative difference between what Lusty says and schemes such as the one the Mrs Brown's Boys actors use. Their salary is paid within the UK but through a shell company in the UK then exported to Mauritius from where it is repatriated as a non-refundable loan to the actors. So they get the money and don't pay tax at all. No withholding tax is due. Its a direct avoidance scheme unlike Lusty's description is one where tax is payable when funds are re-shored back to the UK.
It's not quite the same thing as having a transparent overseas investment as you might have buying a holiday home in Spain for example where your funds to buy it might well come from your own money which has already been taxed at source in the UK, or from a loan in from either a UK or a Spanish bank where there would be no tax relief due on any interest paid.

Good point.

I've paid my fair share of tax over here over the years and I then paid 10% of the purchase value of the property in Spain upon completion.

Interestingly, under Spanish law, once you've agreed a price for the sale and then paid your 10% purchase tax, the authorities then open a file, make an assessment of your property's "real value" and can conceivably slap you with a bill for the difference.

Our solicitor rang me last week to say that this has just happened to us and it has been deemed that the "taxable value" of our place is £40k more than we paid, despite the fact that no one has physically inspected it.

So in theory, we're due another bill at some point.

The good news is though, they're so disorganised, this could take years and we can then launch a counter appeal which itself could take years and even then if you lose (which hardly anybody ever does apparently), you can pay in instalments at something like a fiver a month.

What a monumental waste of time and effort.

Also, just out of interest, I've just paid our SUMA which is their equivalent of our Council Tax and it was a whopping £120 for the year.

I pay more than that every month over here....

This has to be a tip of the iceberg job. I doubt the queen had knowledge of where her money went specifically, though I was surprised that her investors would choose Brighthouse. Though she pays tax voluntarily I would imagine there'll still be some criticism, particularly from the republican side.
Mrs Browns lot had the same idea as Eddie but as it isn't illegal. Lord Ashcroft ploughs bits back but that's probably his attempt at philanthropy, and no doubt we'll hear of others in the coming weeks. Trillions reputed to be in offshore tax haven. Wonder if I can park my salary offshore.

wanderlust wrote:

xmiles wrote:you don't have to pay tax.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41876942

If folk invest their money in offshore banks, they may do so to get a better interest rate on their investment. If that money was invested in the UK they'd have to pay tax on the interest it earned at the year end. Similarly, they would also have to pay tax to the country where the offshore investment was made - but some countries are tax free so technically they are paying tax on their interest at 0% (it is argued)
That means that offshore investment means no income for HMRC which is why people are bitching about it. It's a bit like buying property abroad - no benefit for the UK in terms of tax e.g. CGT.

However, if the offshore investors ever want to bring back their money to the UK, they would then have to pay tax to the UK Government.
In this sense it could be viewed as deferring their tax bill. They could of course, decide not to bring their money back at all ever.
The thing is though that it's their money and in one sense it's morally no worse than going abroad for a holiday and spending your money there or buying a property abroad which can be later sold at a higher value. 
Seeing that every pension scheme including the state pension scheme, every bank deposit, every UK based investment fund that we Brits put money into is largely invested abroad for the very same purpose i.e. to make a profit for us and for the schemes we are signed up to. And just like the offshore investors, we pay tax on our share of the profit when we draw it down in the UK. It could reasonably be argued that everyone with a pension, mortgage or savings account is as equally guilty of avoiding UK tax as the offshore investors in question. 
We live in a globalised economy whether we like it or not and everyone is involved.

You seem remarkably relaxed about this abuse WL.

It is completely different from going abroad for a holiday. This is about artificial arrangements being made with the sole purpose of avoiding tax. These people don't pay tax at all. As rammy has already explained the money comes back as non taxable loans.

It is not at all reasonable to argue that "everyone with a pension, mortgage or savings account is as equally guilty of avoiding UK tax as the offshore investors in question." Only wealthy people exploit the uniquely UK non domicile rules and/or use trusts in tax havens.

Would the likes of Mrs Brown's Boys cast not pay tax via PAYE on their salaries, but not on any savings/investments that accrue interest which is supposed to be taxable as it is sent offshore. I was always under the impression that salaries are taxed and NHI'd at source.

Bollotom2014 wrote:Would the likes of Mrs Brown's Boys cast not pay tax via PAYE on their salaries, but not on any savings/investments that accrue interest which is supposed to be taxable as it is sent offshore. I was always under the impression that salaries are taxed and NHI'd at source.

Salaries are taxed under PAYE but the easiest way to avoid this is to have your money paid to an off shore company so that PAYE is not applied. This is not something most of us can do but if you are rich it's not difficult to arrange.

The details are in this link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41886608

They will no doubt be self-employed and will be contracting their services to the TV production company which makes the show.

And because of the sums involved, they will have been advised by their accountants to go down the off-shore route.

In theory anybody who's self-employed can do it and it's relatively cheap to set up (you can open an online account with a bank in Grand Cayman for about £20)

But unless you're earning the big bucks, it's not really worth the mither.

Provided you've got a decent accountant, it's fairly easy to mitigate your tax liabilities in this country.

You pay yourself a small monthly wage and then periodically award yourself a much larger dividend (I do it three times a year.)

All perfectly legal.

Bollotom2014 wrote:Would the likes of Mrs Brown's Boys cast not pay tax via PAYE on their salaries, but not on any savings/investments that accrue interest which is supposed to be taxable as it is sent offshore. I was always under the impression that salaries are taxed and NHI'd at source.

They themselves are not directly employed- the BBC contracts will be with a personal service company ( a limited company where they are the majority shareholder) which will almost always be domiciled and registered overseas- in this last case Mauritius. So the salary goes abroad directly  from the BBC and then gets repatriated as a non refundable loan
There were lots of BBC employees doing exactly the same thing- most of the BBC newsreaders were in fact personal services companies where the tax rate (corporation tax) was much lower than income tax, so they saved tens of thousands each year. At least they paid some tax as their personal services companies were registered in the UK
HMRC have tried to stamp this out through  something called IR 35 and that's caught a lot of people who set themselves up as a limited company and thus paid much less tax- a legitimate way to minimise their tax bill. Its been partially successful. HMRC set  a test and if a certain proportion of your income ( I think its 75% - but not sure) comes from one source (like the BBC) then you're classed as an employee and pay tax at your appropriate marginal rate which for most newsreaders was  50% (now the top rate at45%)
If you work for a  public service organisation ( like the NHS or an educational establishment) as I do then they have become quite efficient at putting you on the payroll and taxing you under PAYE rules at source. But there's still along way to go in catching everyone doing this

Yeah, cheers Rammy - I forgot to add the bit about IR35 regs.

The rule of thumb I've always been asked is "Do you expect to be working for Company X for not more than 2 years in this capacity?"

You just answer "yes" and you're good to go.