Panamanian Whistle Blower Brief

The raising of taxes has nothing to do with morality,it is to do with Government,and what Government wants to do but can't get those who will benefit to pay for it.
Income and Inheritance taxes kicked off to pay for the Napoleonic Wars and was supposed to be temporary.
"Increases to indirect taxes and a new 'inheritance tax' were hardly enough, and in 1799 Pitt introduced a tax on incomes. Under this new tax all annual incomes over £200 were taxed at 10 per cent, while those between £60 and £200 were taxed at a graduated rate from just under one per cent to 10 per cent. No one was taxed on incomes below £60".
Even then,there was a get-out clause for the wealthy:
"Works of art were specifically excluded from Pitt's inheritance tax, introduced in the Legacy Duty Act of 1796, and remained exempt from taxation until the Budget of 1894".
Fast forward a few years and you get the first inklings of State Welfare,but the rich don't like it:
"In the late 19th century an increasing proportion of annual revenue was coming from direct, as opposed to indirect, taxation. The number of working people paying income tax was steadily rising and in 1905 there were around one million.
Existing taxes were not enough, however, to meet the estimated costs of the radical programme of measures - old age pensions, national insurance, and unemployment assistance - being proposed by David Lloyd George which demanded considerable extra expenditure.
The cost of pensions
In his 1909 'People's Budget' Lloyd George requested that Parliament endorse proposals for raising £7 million to pay for old age pensions in the coming year.
There were to be increases in income tax for the better-off, but with reductions for those on lower incomes. A 'super tax' (or surtax) of 6d in the pound was to be levied on incomes over £5000 (payable on the amount by which incomes exceeded £3000).
In addition, there were steep increases in 'death duties' which had been introduced in 1894.
Most controversial of all, however, were the proposed taxes on land which would fall on the richest members of society. It was this last provision which resulted in the 1909 Finance Bill being rejected by the House of Lords and causing one of the most serious constitutional crises of the 20th century.
The 1909 Finance Bill, though delayed, nevertheless received Royal Assent in April 1910. Lloyd George's taxation measures provoked much displeasure among the rich and wealthy, but he had prevailed on Parliament to accept that taxation should be used not only to raise revenue, but also to 'redistribute' wealth to the less fortunate members of society.
By the start of the Second World War in 1939, considerable spending on increasing Britain's military capacity had already taken place. The rearmament programme, which had begun in the mid-1920s, was costing £197 million by 1937.
In 1938 the standard rate of income tax was increased to 5s 6d (27.5 per cent), with a 41 per cent surtax on incomes over £50,000. Some 10 million people were by now paying direct taxation.
During the war the rate of income tax increased even further in order to keep pace with vast expenditure needs. In the budget of 1941, however, the promise of 'tax credits' was introduced in order to make the increasing load more bearable to the taxpayer.
In 1944 the PAYE system ('pay as you earn') was introduced whereby tax was deducted from wages by employers each week or month. Now that millions of workers were paying income tax, this new scheme allowed tax to be collected more efficiently than previously when tax was collected annually"
Governments and public bodies love raising taxes,and miss no opportunity to hit the majority of us hard in the pocket to pay for their idiocy.
That's how we've ended up with well-paid local councillors,wealthy public sector executives,a vast fleet of wheelchair friendly coaches that no wheelchair user ever travels on,and industries that can't compete with international competitors because of idiotic financial and social tax burdens.To name but a few.
Our world is not Nirvana,and no amount of tax raised/spent foolishly will change it.
The rich are rich and will stay rich,unless you take what they have by force of numbers,either through the ballot box or gunpoint.
And that will never happen,because they are cunning enough to believe in,"divide and you conquer",never truer words said.

 

The history lesson was for background,the rest of it referred to the current position.
Multi-national tax avoiders could easily be brough to book if consumers boycotted (?) their products.
Look at what happened when there was a gentle storm of public opinion quite recently...money talks,and their shareholders would rather stump up some of the tax. than lose their dividends.
But Joe Public doesn't give a shit about Multinational Ltd / Lord Snooty of Soho not paying his dibs,he's too busy stuffing his fat face with Mc-ear-and-nose burgers washed down with Costalot coffee to care about the rest of the population.
As someone intelligent,(now theres a thing!) commented on TV,this little spat will die down as soon as Rupert Murdoch or some other media mogul finds their name is on the list.
Those we pay to protect us have the weapons,(but swear allegiance to the Monarchy).
The Aristocracy have stolen the land and the wealth.
And the middle classes keep both of the above in position.
Civil disobedience will mean nothing to those who shop at Fortnum & Masons,there will always be an army of boot-lickers willing to give up their gruel to keep the Master well fed.
I'm not jealous of those who have an offshore trust,I just pity those who suffer from a lack of basic resources* because the Government/Public sector squander our money on fuckwittedness.
Sort that out first,then go after those who have but don't share.
*(that's not the same as saying lazy feckers are deserving of welfare benefits : I'm talking about people who get a shit education from politically-motivated schoolteachers,and of those who want,but don't have opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty)

 

Caution Daily Mail reader alert. :Hilarious::smileys:

 

The effectiveness of any tax system is about the efficiency of its collection, a) does it get the revenue it was designed to get; b) is it simple and cost effective to collect and c) is it regarded as fair by the people subject to it?
The current corporate taxation system is clearly broken, multinationals avoid/evade it and smaller businesses bear a disproportionate burden and the government is unable to recover the revenue it wants and nobody thinks that Amazon, Google, Starbucks etc etc are playing the game.
The easiest way to solve this is to add x% to VAT on all transactions, the facts of the sale and where it took place are indisputable, the price is recorded, the tax revenue is assured and relatively cheap to collect. It is patently fair. This would have the added benefit for the UK economy that some of the best brains in the country would no longer be employed in devising cunning wheezes to avoid tax and would/could be more gainfully employed doing something productive. The level of the additional % on VAT would have to be carefully assessed so that the ultimate burden of taxation does not fall on the masses i.e. the 98% of the population that own 10% of the wealth.
With regard to personal taxation this is a little trickier to solve, taxation based on assets would not work for example for retired people with significant assets but smaller incomes and would not get around the problem of people hiding their extensive income in foreign jurisdictions. Having spent my whole working life on PAYE I have never had the opportunity to avoid or evade tax, but I am sure it is not beyond the wit of HMRC to craft a set of rules relating to any payments by any organisation to any individual to be subject to PAYE guidelines. This would close down the loop of evasion and avoidance in the UK but would not solve the foreign jurisdiction issue. Here I think it should be possible to make law that payments made to foreign jurisdictions are scrutinised for the extent to which they are effectively income for UK residents and therefore subject to UK PAYE rules. The tax could then be collected subject only to the relevant organisation proving that such payments were not payments of income subject to UK taxation i.e. reversing the onus of proof onto the receiving organisation rather than HMRC. Extensive checks are already carried out for money laundering so this would not be so difficult to do. Here would be a role for all those unemployed by changes to the corporate taxation changes proposed above, turn them into collectors rather than evaders.

 

If corporation tax was replaced with a sales tax the burden would fall upon the ordinary man in the street and away from the idea that it is corporate profits that are taxed (I realise that all profit ultimates comes from the end consumer).
However the current situation is not acceptable and needs changing somehow so that the likes of Amazon, Starbucks, Google pay their fair share.
It is yet another aspect of globalisation for the benefit of the 1%.

 

I would like to know what the revenue take from VAT is and how much HMG get from Corporation tax. Most major companies must compile their annual budgets and also therefore cost their products on their after tax profit expectation so the price offered to consumers makes allowance for the corporation tax to be paid (any corporation tax avoided is therefore pure additional profit hence the effort /industry involved in doing so). Provided there is competition in a market then the an additional say 2% on VAT would be subject to competitive pressure in the market. But the important thing for government is that the projected revenue from taxing business would be a lot more predictable and far cheaper to collect. Taxing profits is a disastrous strategy because profit is a nebulous concept as any accountant will tell you.
Theoretically the burden is already on the consumer if the Corporation tax system doesn't collect what it is supposed to because that means that other forms of taxation have to be adjusted upwards to compensate eg. income tax, NHI, VAT, fuel duty etc etc.

 

Taxing profit may be nebulous, but you can hardly tax enterprises that are making a loss.
I'm all in favour of corporation tax but I might do it like this:
Have one rate of tax for companies incorporated in the UK.
Have a higher rate for companies that aren't.
Hey presto, your small business pays less tax than corporate giants. If they want to pay less, they have to locate to the UK.
I would ban all overseas "intellectual property rights" and "consultancy fees" as being chargeable expenses for businesses, and would question inter-company transfer pricing which also distorts profits.
I would make life particularly difficult for any company situated in a tax haven where it is clear that it does almost no business.

I may have mentioned this some time ago, but I once tried to buy some Timberland shoes on the web. The billing company was Timberland Switzerland, but they refused to deliver to Switzerland as it is not in the EU. I suppose Timberland Switzerland is just a small office somewhere with a phone, not a proper business. But I thought it was a bit rich.

 

I'd be interested to know how the £500k from rental payments has been calculated. Over what time period? If the salary is annual, then the rental payments should be too. That would make about £20k per month on each house. Yeah, right.
It always a pity when someone starts with a really good premise and then ruins it though needless exaggeration.

 

For which we require transparency.

 

Spoilsport.

 

Well, enough already exists for this. We know where companies are incorporated. The moment you see BVI or Luxembourg, we should be all over them like a rash.

 

Is it not the case that mega corporations act like monopolies or cartels and is there an argument for limiting the size a corporation is allowed to be ???