Smoke & mirrors

---

Tax avoidance "adds 2p to tax rate"

---

If true, this is disgusting!

"Super rich" hiding at least $21 trillion

---

If true, this is disgusting!

"Super rich" hiding at least $21 trillion

Don't want them to "hide" it in plain sight, I doubt the Cayman Islands would put up much resistance to a modern navy.

---

I doubt the Cayman Islands would put up much resistance to a modern navy.

The funds are held electronically, not millions of gold bars in some vault that can be raided. When you put money into a deposit account from your current account, no physical cash changes hands. Poeple don't turn up to the Cayman Islands in their yacht with suitcases full of bank notes!

If you seize the computer you control the funds.

---

Maybe, but by what right could a country invade another (Ignoring Falklands) without declaring war? You can't turn an economic war into a physical one.

Of course you can. It is the they have got, we want, we take, approach. You know Robin Hood. I suggest you look at the causes of war.

However it doesn't have to go that far. Just cut them out of the electronic funds transfer business. A blockade. Then all those credits sitting on an electronic deposit record are worthless. As you said, there aren't bars of gold waiting for someone to pick up.

If the rest of the world wants disclosure to its tax people of names and account balances, it can have it anytime it wants. Just the mere threat and they will cave.

---

The other side of the coin....

Should they be taxed?

US Olympic medal winners facing tax bill on their medals & winnings

---

Of course they shouldn't, shame on the USA.

Any income from any source ... the tax rate isn't high enough on these 1%'ers either. Heck you would think they went to London to escape the US tax man, just like banking in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

---

Hey, I thought this was amateur athletics. By the way, it isn't the medal that gets taxed, its the winnings. And, of course, if you are in the business of getting at athletics income (and many of the Olympians are) you can offset the winnings with the costs of doing business.

Of course if you built it yourself -- with no expenses for anyone since you trained on your parents land and had no trainers and swam over to the UK on your own, then a lot more of the winnings would be taxable.

Of course the value of the medal is taxable. Give someone a gold bar or silver ingot and you think that escapes tax?

It wouldn't surprise me if the NCAA calls that being a paid athlete and disbars from college athletics because of it.

---

It isn't the medals that cause major tax issues, it is the cash awards that go with them:


Weighing 400 grams, the Olympic gold medals that are being doled out at the London 2012 Summer Games are the heaviest ever, according to reports. But that doesn't mean they're the most valuable: at an estimated $620.82, they're nearly $590 short of the $1,207.86 value held by a gold medal from the Stockholm Games of 1912.

The discrepancy stems from the fact that the 2012 gold medals contain only 6 grams of gold; the rest is silver and copper. In fact, the London bling contains more copper than gold, which is only used to coat the medals with a plating layer.

The Cash awards for Olympic medals -- $25K for Gold, $15K for Silver, $10K for Bronze. That's where the tax liability adds up. Unless the winners have Rmoney's tax advisors, that means they have a real tax liability -- perhaps 20% or more depending on their other income.

The NCAA would have no problem as long as THEY got a cut.

It wouldn't surprise me if the NCAA calls that being a paid athlete and disbars from college athletics because of it.

It seems this problem just won't go away....

...Now it's eBay's turn.....

eBay avoids paying £50 mill tax

---

The best approach is to have flat taxes, at say 15% and 35% on an income change point (say £60K). Then all allowances, compensated by the flat tax, would be abolished (no exceptions, no allowances, no loop holes), and prosecutions if tax lawyers/accountants tried this on.

That would simplify tax matters, and remove non-jobs which contribute nothing to the economy (just paper shuffling) for accountants and lawyers. We have lost much of our own markets, which can be recaptured.

Get these people in to manufacturing, as there is lots to go for to replace imports with UK manufacturers.

---

It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues

Editor facing jail for exposing tax evaders

Couldn't happen here, could it?

"Plenty of prominent characters would cheerfully see reporters banged up for publishing inconvenient truths about their behaviour"

Yep, & we all know who they are!

---

Public sector workers employed by tax avoidance firm

"Mr Murphy told the BBC: "The UK can't afford this tax loss and it can't afford so many households being put at tax risk. This is a scandal waiting to break."

The government also stands accused of having ignored the problem despite warnings.

Professional Passport wrote to Treasury minister David Gauke in July 2011 to point out the "potentially embarrassing" issue of public sector agency workers being employed by offshore umbrella companies.

Mr Temple says he is yet to receive a response."

Further confirmation that the muppets at the top are just not listening!

---

Pot, Kettle & Black springs to mind.....

Labour MP's company pays 0.25% tax on £2.1 billion

---

Another reason why Public Utilities should be re-nationalised.....

3 of UK's biggest Water Companies paid little or no Corporation Tax

Also see Starbuck's getting hammered, & so they should - declaring to the world that they're making Loadsa of Moneee, & at the same time, telling our HMRC, they're making losses.....

Which is it Starbucks?

---

Sirius, you don't have to buy Starbuck's, I don't.

---

Sirius, you didn't have to vote in the Starbucks tax loopholes, but maybe you thought the employment and sales (VAT?) would offset the missed corporate income tax.

---