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British government makes it illegal to tell a person how tax law actually works Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is finding ways within the rules to arrange your affairs to minimise the tax you pay. So by saying advisers who tell you how to actually do that will be fined, the British government is prohibiting people from being told how existing tax laws work.
Unless there is something I am misunderstanding, this appears to be completely insane. It seems to now be illegal to, er, legally arrange your affairs in such a manner as to inconvenience HMG.
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When did Britain become Kafka’s Magic Kingdom? I must have missed the announcement.
So in GB you get arrested for giving tax advice.
If you wrote something true about Islam on the internet the police knock on your door.
Ayatollah Mayor Khan wants to do this:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/08/16/london-mayor-to-set-up-police-online-hate-crime-hub-in-partnership-with-social-media-firms/
In the US we at least have a candidate who opposes this but all I see from here in the US are the two political parties who care less about your freedoms, your liberties or your rights.
Could Rotherham happen in the US? With Hillary, absolutely yes. Trump, not.
Anyone agree?
Taxman, rope, tree, some assembly required.
“Could Rotherham happen in the US?”
Twin Falls, Idaho.
Three muslim immigrant boys – 7, 10, 14 – from Sudan and Iraq – sexually attacking and photographing a five-year-old local girl. Attack interrupted.
Police and city council and local media suppress all news about attack and attackers.
United States Attorney for the region threatens bloggers with federal arrest if they blog about the incident.
Residents were up in arms about resettlement of muslim refugees before this attack, so the cops and city council and the US fedgov tried to hide it.
Yes, Hillary would do this in a second. Trump would not.
Seems like someone (who probably ought not care about being able to visit England) should set up shop on the internet, located in some suitable foreign land, to offer you chaps tax advice. Doesn’t prevent the gov from then focusing on the recipient of tax advice, but methinks that becomes a much harder sell.
This is the inevitable result of conflating avoidance with evasion, which governments (with the aid of the media) have been pushing for years. It will be interesting to see the “industry feedback” which has been “invited”.
Is that Jane Ellison at the Treasury really as stupid as she sounds?
1. Tax evasion and tax avoidance are the same thing. They are reductions in the government’s receipts. That is all that matters. (I once heard a senior HMRC official – the egregious “Dave” Hartnett – lecture on this very point.) The only distinction between evasion and avoidance is that the menaces used for collections have to be adjusted.
2. Once you remember that what you fondly imagine to be “your” income is in fact the national income (why else would we have the “Gross National Product”) which is then subject to distribution (hence all the statistics on “income distribution”) all this confusion goes away.
3. Ministers and officials who disagree with your individualist values are not “stupid.” They are merely using a different frame of reference.
“Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.”
–Learned Hand
Learned Hand, it is no crime to seek to minimize your taxes- the crime is in helping others to do so! You are supposed to find out how to minimize your own taxes from scratch, by browsing through the Tax laws and codes. (How many books and pages is that?) Then you keep this knowledge to yourself. You don’t want innocent kiddies playing around with this stuff!
Re minimizing your taxes the attached link is to the late Kerry Bullmore Packer giving evidence to an Australian Parliamentary Committee. His comment on taxation is at the 2 minute 20 second mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WTfoT_y-BQ
May is a deeply stupid cow.
Mix that with her “Thatcher 2” routine and it is a recipe for trouble.
Get on with Brexit you stupid bitch never mind the thievery.
This has been true for a while, which is why British banks and Wealth Managers will not involve themselves directly, but refer you to a ‘partner firm’ in a tax haven.
I prefer the formulation of Clyde LJ in ) in the case of Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue [1929] 14 Tax Case 754, at 763,764:
“No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue”
The crime will be managing your tax affairs in ways which were “not intended” by the legislation. Unless the intentions of the legislators are reflected in the written law itself, it means you can be prosecuted in years to come because you did not take into account thoughts in strangers’ heads.
just like they asked how are we going to pay for tax cuts, they likewise ask how are we going to pay for tax avoidance. The presumption of course is that your money really belongs to them. Anytime anyone terms a reduction in tax revenue has a cost, you know you have problems.
Ok, I just read an article in the Times which makes this at least somewhat less bonkers… it is only if the Tax Avoidance scheme is found to be illegal in court that the Tax Advisers would get fined. Still…
Also the original linked article seems to have been “edited for clarity” 😀
in America when the wealthy work within the confines of the law to keep all of their own money that they can, they are accused of taking more than their fair share.when the non- wealthy however take all of their exemptions and tax deductions, somehow they don’t consider themselves to be tax
cheats. Funny how that works out.
“Tax planners, advisers and accountants”. How about lawyers? Have our legal-beagle brethren exempted themselves?
Bobby B. wrote:
‘“Could Rotherham happen in the US?”
Twin Falls, Idaho.
Three muslim immigrant boys – 7, 10, 14 – from Sudan and Iraq – sexually attacking and photographing a five-year-old local girl. Attack interrupted.
Police and city council and local media suppress all news about attack and attackers.
United States Attorney for the region threatens bloggers with federal arrest if they blog about the incident.
Residents were up in arms about resettlement of muslim refugees before this attack, so the cops and city council and the US fedgov tried to hide it.
Yes, Hillary would do this in a second. Trump would not.’
Please explain
a) how ‘Hillary would do this in a second’
b) how ‘Trump would not’.
Your claim that ‘Police and city council and local media suppress all news about attack and attackers’ is straight-up nonsense. The simplest Google search produces thousands of reports from local, state and regional newspapers and media outlets, including reports of press conferences by local and state police and local authorities, as well as countless blog posts about the story.
Which is why I do not believe for one moment that
‘United States Attorney for the region threatens bloggers with federal arrest if they blog about the incident.’
since (again) the simplest Google search turns up countless blog posts about the story. And there is not one credible report of the US Attorney threatening anyone with arrest for doing anything. The text of the statement of the US Attorney may be read here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/06/26/chief-idaho-federal-prosecutor-warns-the-spread-of-false-information-or-inflammatory-or-threatening-statements-may-violate-federal-law/?utm_term=.e4067bb7a0f8
Professor Volokh rightly questions the possible implications that might be drawn from the US Attorney’s statement, but the fact remains that no bloggers have been threatened with federal arrest.
Leaving all that aside –
Do you truly believe that either a President Clinton, or a President Trump, are going to start their day by reviewing every single crime report throughout the entire nation and then deciding whether or not to suppress reports of that crime for political reasons? Really?
I detect a sentiment which is becoming more and more common among Trump supporters, which is some sort of belief that the mere fact of his election to the Presidency will make all wrongs right. News flash – the President (whoever he or she may be) has very-limited powers, and virtually-all of the wonderfulness that candidates promise during election campaigns are not within the powers of the President – any president – to bring to pass.
As we may see by the campaign promises of the current incumbent. This sort of magickal thinking – I won’t have to worry about my mortgage, I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car! – was the hallmark of President Obama’s campaigns for the office. Looks like Trump has taken a leaf from his playbook.
llater,
llamas
llamas,
Trump more or less understands that Islam is a danger.
Clinton understands it is a danger and likes it that way;
1) She knows that Muslims are a reliable voting bloc
2) She knows that the more Muslims we import the more votes for the left
3) She believes that if Muslims kill Christians, Jews, Gays or anyone else in the US, ” what difference does it make.”
4) She has seen this all play out in Europe and agrees with her close ideological ally, George Soros, that this a very good thing.
I live near Twin Falls, Idaho and you have demonstrated that you have no clue as to what happened there and why.
Trump gets all this. So do his advisors (even more than he), so do the people who have and will vote for him.
You don’t. Very simple, buddy.
John Galt III – well, I brought data, which anyone may verify. You brought unsupported opinions. Who demonstrated what here, would you say?
The claim was not about what Clinton or Trump understand about Muslims – the claim was what they would do about it. My point is that neither would be able to do very much, and specifically, that Trump would not – could not – do anything to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
It’s quite clear from the mass of reporting that virtually-everything that has been hysterically reported about this incident is either just flat untrue, or wildly-exaggerated. It’s being used to inflame all sorts of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment, and of course that leads inevitably to the story being taken up by Trump supporters with the claim that ‘this won’t happen when Trump is President!’ Which is, of course, total nonsense.
Very simple, really.
llater,
llamas – who is not your buddy. Go patronize somebody else.
“The claim was not about what Clinton or Trump understand about Muslims – the claim was what they would do about it. My point is that neither would be able to do very much, and specifically, that Trump would not – could not – do anything to prevent this sort of thing from happening.”
After seeing what has happened to Europe, it appears the only way to prevent this sort of thing from happening is not to import millions of people with a belief system rooted in the 7th century. A ban or severe restriction on immigration from regions where over 90% of people believe apostates should be killed is actually rather easy to implement. So they “could” do something about it. Whether they would, however, is another question.
Chip – you miss my point. Whoever is the President is only that – the President. Not the King, or the Emperor. They have no power under our Constitution or our laws to allow, prevent or control immigration. Only the Congress has that power, by passing laws.
I realize that this has not prevented President Obama from effectively altering US immigration law by his executive orders that produce selective enforcement – which is, of course, a gross breach of his oath of office. So what you’re suggesting – that a President Trump ‘could’ do something about it, by using his executive powers – would require that he do that same unlawful, unconstitutional things that President Obama has done and continues to do. So breaking the law and thumbing your nose at the Constitution is OK when your guy does it?
If you want to prevent the immigration of persons who present a danger to the US, the people who can do that for you are in the Congress. The President has no lawful power to do so. And he misleads you when he tries to persuade you that he will have that power. No surprise there, really – after all, how can you tell when Donald Trump is promising something that he will do, if elected President, that he cannot possibly deliver? A. His lips are moving.
llater,
llamas
My point was general rather than about Trump specifically. Immigration from problematic areas is easily curtailed. Trump is a buffoon in most respects but he’s more right than wrong here.
And as you pointed out, a president has considerable influence over migration and much else when congress and the courts are compliant. It’s perhaps the composition of the court under Hilary that will do the most Long-lasting harm as the administrative state continues to throttle individual liberty in the US.
At risk of bringing this thread back to the original topic, this sort of thing has been going on for a while. Tax advisers will say “Sorry, we can’t have this conversation here but if we meet up in Country X, we can.” They also – and I find this difficult to believe but I have been assured it is true – have to submit their plans to the Inland Revenue in advance.
Yay for Llamas’ fact checking, I came here to say the same.
A quick Google search is all that’s needed to deflate this conspiracy:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Twin+Falls%22+Idaho+immigrant+rape
– and Llamas is right. The president is just the president, not an absolute monarch.
Don’t utility companies and mobile phone companies make their tariff systems complex and opaque in order to make it impossible for consumers to work out who is offering the best deal? Isn’t this practice considered to be a bad thing by the government? Those evil companies are deliberately making their deals hopelessly confusing in order to rip people off. So why not make the tax system simple and straightforward so that everyone knows how much they are obliged to pay to stay within the law without having to take advice from experts on tax avoidance? Surely the government couldn’t be deliberately making the tax system hopelessly confusing in order to rip people off? That would be immoral wouldn’t it?
– and Llamas is right. The president is just the president, not an absolute monarch.
Yes, absolutely true. We also have existing immigration laws which, if actually enforced by the executive branch, would stop the immigration into the US. It would be neither unlawful nor unconstitutional.
Llamas, you are certainly correct that the president is merely that, not the emperor. But your next rebuttal to Chip isn’t necessarily correct. A President Trump could (not saying that he would; who knows what that man would do) with a stroke of his pen undo all of Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders. That would be precisely the opposite of an “unlawful, unconstitutional thing.” In fact, it would be following the proper constitutional order, something we haven’t seen in a very long time.
And after he’s finished abolishing all those illegal executive orders, he could also return to a constitutional process of senatorial ratification of treaties, rather than claiming his deals are “executive agreements” which require no such ratification. I’m certainly not saying that Trump would do any of these things, but I guarantee that Hillary would not.
llamas:
Read:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/26/obama-appointee-threatens-americans-free-speech-after-refugee-sex-attack-on-idaho-girl-the-spread-of-false-information-may-violate-federal-law/
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/06/idaho-muslim-migrant-sex-assault-case-obama-appointed-prosecutor-threatens-community
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article84975342.html
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/idaho-u-s-attorney-spreading-false-information-may-violate-federal-law.php
I googled, and got these as the top entries. Google the rest yourself.
I’m far from a Trump supporter. However, I can see a Hillary admin continuing the Obama admin’s philosophy of opacity in all things inconvenient. I can’t see Trump trying to stamp out any such issues.
“If you want to prevent the immigration of persons who present a danger to the US, the people who can do that for you are in the Congress.”
Congress has passed into law a comprehensive set of rules governing immigration.
Obama – the head of the executive branch of our government – the branch that carries out those laws – has, by executive authority, ended enforcement of several of those laws on his own initiative.
Congress could overrule Obama’s actions, but only if it can garner 60% of the Senate and 51% of the House to pass such a law – which they have been unable to do.
O has turned us into a “strong president – weak Congress” system.
And . . .
When the head prosecutor for the United States Attorney Office makes a public statement “urging” people not to publish things she sees as “inaccurate”, there’s a very strong incentive for anyone involved to simply stop publishing.
Yes, I read her statement. Several times. Looks innocuous. But it should never have been made in a country governed by our Constitution.
Bobby B. – now go and find the second, clarifying statement from the US attorney, in which she makes it clear exactly what she meant. Needless to say, it was not the misunderstanding to which you fell victim. Your links gave been, quite simply, overtaken by events.
And I wouldn’t believe anything that’s posted on jihadwatch.com.
llater,
llanas
Bobby b – you read her first statement. You are obviously unaware that she made a second, clarifying statement, in which she made it clear that she was not attempting to suppress any comment or threatenbsny vblogger with arrest’, as you claimed. Her allusions to possible breaches of Federal law were intended to refer to threats which had been directed at public officials whe were alleged to have been involved in the non-existent ‘cover up’.
Go ahead – Google that. The links you provided are, quite simply, out of date.
llater,
llamas
“out of date” – for the time being.
But smart people will take the hint and start auto censoring.
llamas – when the head federal prosecutor makes a statement that says don’t be “inaccurate”, and her entire job consists of choosing who to subject to serious federal-system criminal prosecutions – and not, say, of ensuring that written publications are put out in good taste, or any other job – she can “clarify” all she wants. She used her powers to coerce the news. Why would anyone care what she thinks about what’s being published if she couldn’t ruin their lives with her prosecutorial powers? She “clarified” only after major backlash.
The city council apologized for keeping info from the public. (Wait, didn’t you say it was “nonsense” when I said they kept the info from the public?) They said they did so because the perps were minors. Facially, good answer, but very suspect, given the rather large fights that had been taking place in those same council chambers over the feds bringing in a large contingent of islamic immigrants.
You apparently would allow all of these people unlimited do-overs until they sounded nice enough. I think their first impulses were telling. My entire point about “could Rotherham happen here” had to do with the idea of covering up what we don’t want people to know because they won’t react as well as we would. That’s what happened in Rotherham, that’s what was beginning to happen in Idaho.
I’m only vaguely familiar with the Idaho case but I think I’m right in saying that prosecutorial meddling in politics is increasing in the US. So called lawfare was used against Perry in Texas, and in Wisconsin it became particularly odious with GOP members being raided at their homes by police in the middle of the night.
And of course the IRS was clearly weaponized in its crackdown of a then-ascendent Tea Party movement in the run-up to an election, while a several state AGs recently made a move to shut down climate skeptics.
How did it turn out for Christian bakeries that didn’t want to provide cakes for gay weddings?
booby b. – well, let’s take what you said, point by point.
You said:
‘Three muslim immigrant boys – 7, 10, 14 – from Sudan and Iraq – sexually attacking and photographing a five-year-old local girl. Attack interrupted.’
The facts that have already been released by the police (who you claim are trying to cover this case up, remember?) make it clear that only one of the three suspects in this case is even alleged to have ‘sexually attacked’ the victim. And large parts of your statement simply assume facts not in evidence – ‘muslim’ and ‘immigrant’, for starters.
You said:
‘Police and city council and local media suppress all news about attack and attackers.’
Nonsense. On stilts. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of stories about this case online and in traditional media. Local newspapers and TV stations were reporting the case soon after it was reported, and that reporting then spread to state and regional media – probabaly because of all the wildly-inaccurate and untrue versions of the story being repeated by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim websites. The only facts that have been suppressed about this case are the actual identities of all concerned -the alleged victim as well as the alleged perpetrators – because all are minors. Standard procedure, likely state law as well.
You said:
‘United States Attorney for the region threatens bloggers with federal arrest if they blog about the incident.’
More-or-less completely untrue. The US Attorney didn’t threaten any bloggers with arrest, for anything, in her original statement, and she clarified her remarks to make it clear that nobody was being threatened with anything for talking about the case.
You said:
‘ . . . .the cops and city council and the US fedgov tried to hide it.(the attack)’
Produce one single piece of evidence that shows that any of these people or agencies did anything to try and hide anything about this alleged attack, beyond the identities of those involved, at any time. Not your vague assertions about how you think people tried to ‘coerce’ others, or how you think that what was done or said was ‘suspect’. Show me some facts – a reporter denied an interview, or threatened for asking questions, or a blogger who got a nasty visit from the Feds. And remember – the ‘fact’ that you did not immediately see this case reported 24/7 on CNN is not ‘evidence’ of a cover-up – it’s simply that it’s a minor criminal case in a small town in Idaho, and in fact, it’s not very clear at all yet just what did and didn’t happen.
Incidentally, you ascribe all sorts of dark motives to the US Attorney, saying that ‘She “clarified” only after major backlash’, but you totally-ignore the fact that this story was originally reported with wildly-exaggerated and untrue claims, presented as fact. As originally alleged, this attack involved three Syrian refugees who raped this little girl at knifepoint. The only true part of that account may be the number ‘three’. Apparently, reporting a more-or-less complete fabrication is just fine, but the US Attorney clarifying her remarks – that’s an evil conspiracy!
So I stand by what I said – virtually-everything that you stated about this case is simply untrue – or, as I like to say, ‘nonsense’. And it proves, once again, several important maxims, namely
– virtually-everything that the media reports immediately after any incident that appears to be an outrage that would horrify any decent person – will turn out to be more-or-less completely wrong.
– when reading Internet accounts of alleged wrong-doings by ‘Muslim immigrants’, well-more than 50% of what you read will be complete nonsense, or hysterical conspiracy-theory bunk, cf Jihadwatch, Pamela Geller, WND, Richard Swiers, And So Forth.
Right now, the best read that there is on this case is that it’s some sort of sexual assault on a very young child by older children. Horrible enough. But virtually-all of the other cr*p that’s been attached to the story, by all sorts of people, for their own ends, has turned out to be entirely-fabricated.
And you still haven’t explained to me how this sort of thing would not happen if only Trump were President. What will he do – project rays of wonderfulness from the White House that will simply stop child molesters In Their Tracks? It’s absurd to think that any President can stop crime by the mere fact of his presence.
llater,
llamas
I am very, very far from underestimating Islam (and by extension Muslim immigrants) as a real threat to the Western civilization. But that realization notwithstanding, I think that the whole issue is being increasingly treated with hysteria at a level far exceeding that of the threat itself. And in any case, I see our own governments as a far-greater threat than any immigration past, present or future may present – not least due to the fact that these same governments are the ones enabling and empowering Islam and Islamists in the first place.
“So breaking the law and thumbing your nose at the Constitution is OK when your guy does it?”
That’s pretty much the consensus these days.
They are reductions in the government’s receipts
This is the real issue.
All this rhetoric about making taxpayers pay their due is pivotal on the fact that the reason why many pay tax is because they do things that benefit them and generate taxable income, if the tax was too high and it made the thing no longer a benefit they would not do it and there would be no income and no increase in tax revenue.
Laffer curve blah blah blah.
Whilst the moral high ground on taxation is never perceived to be standing on this rather tall fallacy, this argument will run and run.
“I see our own governments as a far-greater threat than any immigration past, present or future may present – not least due to the fact that these same governments are the ones enabling and empowering Islam and Islamists in the first place.”
That’s the nub of it. Outside politics the world is clicking along nicely. From advances in tech and medicine to the shale revolution, the non-governmental stuff is wonderful.
But with a few exceptions our politicians are woeful, and that they are making headway in glomming onto more power for themselves at the expense of individual liberty is deeply worrying.
I’m an atheist but part of me wonders if the death of Judeo-Christian faith is pushing people into the arms of another comforting paradigm – the state. Can the free market survive secularism?
It is not insane. It is totalitarianism.
Politicians hate us.
You are correct Perry – it stinks.
And the establishment media (such as the Economist magazine) think it is wonderful.
The idea of giving advice of how to stay WITHIN the law being made a “crime”…..
One thing I agree with Sean Gabb about is that the modern elite have nothing but contempt for the basic principles of the Common Law. Although I think his allies are even worse than the people he, quite rightly, attacks.
It is difficult not to despair about a situation in which such an outrage is committed – and the establishment media (and academia) all seem to think it is a good thing.