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Hey, Cameron! Remember what you did to Jimmy Carr? June 2012: David Cameron uses his bully pulpit as Prime Minister to denounce the comedian Jimmy Carr for the entirely legal way he arranged his financial affairs to minimize tax.
April 2016: David Cameron is denounced from all sides for the entirely legal way he arranged his financial affairs to minimize tax.
I weep. With laughter.
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Politicians don’t like paying tax, that’s ironic.
I would disapprove but choke back my laughter should the UK’s Chancellor, decide to tax Mr Cameron’s transactions (again) retrospectively, as he has said he will do if his rules are got around.
It certainly seemed to me, looking at this story unfolding, that Cameron had done nothing wrong – except criticise Mr Carr and others for doing things equally not wrong. He panderingly made the bed in which he now lies. Dare we hope he will rediscover a Tory principle with which to defend himself?
Although I agree with Oliver Wendell Homes – “The very meaning of a line in the law is that you may intentionally go as close to it as you dare, provided you do not cross it” – my point here is that Cameron and his late father do not appear to have gone that near any particular line, let alone right up to one. We may have a moral opinion – even, in this variegated world, one that occasionally overlaps with the propaganda of the PC – about people who intentionally go right up to the lines of some laws, but it’s not even clear to me that anything like this is true of the Cameron family finances in this case.
(Quotation from memory)
Not entirely. Carr was part of a tax avoidance scheme that involved offshore companies being the ones who got paid for the entertainers’ performances and the offshore company then employs the entertainer on a small wage and also lends money to the entertainer. This way the performer has little taxable income.
Personally I think what Carr did was closer to evasion than avoidance (due to the loans being effectively fake) and HMRC should be prosecuting people for it. Yet they settle for the people paying tax as if they hadn’t entered into the scheme and are seemingly reluctant to set a precedent one way or the other. Imo HMRC do not want the law to by crystal clear and loophole free as this would deny them considerable leverage.
The way HMRC currently approaches tax avoidance schemes is that you have to declare you are using one and provide details of how it operates. In HMRC’s own sweet time they will get around to deciding whether they think it is legitimate or not. Until that time you are basically on notice that you might still get a hefty tax bill unless you choose to challenge HMRC at a tax tribunal (at which you could still lose as radio presenter Chris Moyles did).
That’s my main point and concern regarding the Hastert prosecution and indictment.
[It’s interesting that the other charge was “making false statements to Federal investigators.” Very careful wording! As “false statements” are made all the time (except of course in this parish), with no intent to deceive, mislead, confuse, or anything else skullduggish.]
(I like “skullduggish” much better than “disapprobable.” 🙂 )
But they dropped that charge as part of the plea bargain.
This charge, by the way, is the one that got Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby terms in the slammer.
And lest I be guilty of falsely stating or at least implying, I won’t swear that Hastert never withdrew $ 10,001 or more dollars, so maybe he is actually guilty of crossing that line — at least once.
Yes Natalie – there is nothing illegal about Mr Cameron’s tax affairs, or even about Mr Osborne’s Trusts (that is the next shoe to drop).
However, both Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne have been talking the language of the left for years – “Social Justice”, “fair shares”, not paying more tax being “immoral” and on and on………. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne did the work of the left for them – they (both men of inherited wealth) dug a vast pit of envy and class hated, and then fell into the pit that they themselves had dug.
Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are stuck up on their own big pointy stick.
‘Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are stuck up on their own big pointy stick.’
And it serves ’em right. If you deliberately ‘muddle’, i.e. conflate, avoidance and evasion… sowing and reaping.
Gosh! Could this be another reason that tax havens never actually get shut down? Because politicians are hypocrites? Who would have thought it? I’m glad that we here in Australia have totally honest politicians. We must have, or our papers would have told us, wouldn’t they?
“Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are stuck up on their own big pointy stick.”
I find myself unable to enjoy this as others are, because the existence of the pointy stick bothers me too much. Tax is theft. Tax avoidance is legal an moral. That’s all I want to hear. I don’t care about Cameron one way or another. Maybe if this makes politicians less likely to attack tax avoidance some good will come of it, but they will more likely attempt to “close loopholes”.
I feel the same, Rob. As much as seeing Cameron squirm is somewhat enjoyable I am bothered that the undisputed consensus of public opinion appears to be shifting to an even more extreme position where tax and wealth is concerned.
I don’t find this enjoyable either, but the hypocrisy and stupidity of people such as Cameron does need to be pointed out.
A prescient comment from ‘John K’ in the linked ‘Bully Pulpit’ post back in 2012:
Funny how what goes around comes around. That said, I agree with Rob and Alex. Cameron rightly deserves the jeers of hypocrisy, but the associated attempts to ‘shame’ him with this supposed immoral act of legally structuring his tax affairs are a concerning indication of the politics of envy which seem to be gaining ground.
First they came for the tax avoiders, and all that. In the world of contracting, there was a technical note from the recent budget which seems to have escaped wider notice, but which further rolls the UK down the road to ‘rule of law is dead‘ banana republic, by introducing further retrospective legislation.
Further details: http://www.wttconsulting.co.uk/#!Lifting-the-disguise-An-article-written-for-Taxation-Magazine
As many predicted, here and elsewhere, the Panama Papers are being portrayed in the press mostly as stories about tax evasion / avoidance.
I believe the issue of WHERE THEY GOT THE CASH IN THE FIRST PLACE, rather than the taxes muddle, must be maintained front and center if we are to gain anything from this event.
The politicos, though, are clearly in “waste no crisis” mode, and are enthusiastically pushing new tax and biz rules for the rest of us to be bound by.
Oh Joy.
(At least Instapundit has a link about How One Gets Rich As Speaker Of The (US) House.)
Doesn’t matter what you, or anyone else thinks, Gareth. It also doesn’t matter how close to tax evasion it is — it still isn’t tax evasion. It’s a matter of law, and neither Carr nor Cameron broke it, nor can they be prosecuted for it.
And screw public opinion, too. Public opinion, these days, is rife with wealth envy, big-government worship and other crap I dare not utter on a family website like samizdata.net; and as such cannot be trusted. I don’t care how people earn their money, spend their money or hide their money, as long as it’s within the letter of the law. And if the letter of the law becomes too rapacious or invasive, then the lawmakers shouldn’t be surprised if people start looking for ways to avoid it or circumvent it. ‘Twas ever thus, and nothing will ever change it.