Cameron tax avoidance: If dodgy Dave isn’t getting the money, who will?
His body language betrays him: The hand up to his head suggests David Cameron was trying to conceal the facts when he faced questions from journalists about his family’s tax affairs during a visit to PwC in Birmingham. PwC is, of course, one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms that helps write tax law in the UK – and is responsible for a huge number of tax avoidance schemes about which the Conservative Government has done very little.
After no less than four different statements on the subject, David Cameron is still no closer to telling us whether he is really going to benefit from his father’s tax avoidance.
Three statements yesterday – and now a fourth one today (April 6) – have claimed that he and his family do not currently receive money from offshore funds and trusts, and will not receive money from offshore sources in the future.
But Blairmore Holdings, the company created for tax avoidance purposes by Cameron’s late father Ian, moved to Ireland in 2010, according to the Telegraph. Does that count as offshore, in the mind of the person or people who wrote those statements?
Nobody seems to be asking about the reasons for creating Blairmore to avoid tax in the first place. Certainly Cameron Sr wanted to enjoy the benefits of a reduced tax bill in his lifetime, and nothing has been said about the financial affairs of his wife, the prime minister’s mother Mary. It seems highly unlikely that she does not benefit from Blairmore or a similar fund. What happens when she passes away?
In short: If David Cameron is not receiving funds from this tax avoidance venture, then who is?
Cameron has certainly gained financially from Blairmore in the past – he received £300,000 from his father in Cameron Sr’s will, after Ian Cameron died in 2010. This means there are questions still to be asked about the Conservative Government’s lax attitude to tax avoidance, which can be summed up in four words: “Talk hard, be soft.”
For example, Chris Bryant – who was responsible for overseas territories and dependencies when Labour was in power – was involved in a standoff with them over transparency. He had pressed them to be more transparent and tried to put pressure on them by refusing to authorise loans, but the standoff ended when the Conservatives took office in 2010. The Tories simply dropped the matter.
Perhaps most importantly of all, with an election now just one month away, this affair has shaken voters’ confidence in the Conservative Party.
How can we believe Tory election promises when we know they don’t act on those pledges?
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If he had any cojones, he’d say “Yes, of course I did! My father was no fool.
Oh, and we’re increasing the amount you can put into an ISA so more of you can avoid tax too!”
But he hasn’t and he won’t…
He knows it is electoral suicide. He’d be telling the rest of us that he is forcing the poor to support the state while the rich merely leech off it.
Clearly that is also your opinion – that the rich should be allowed to leech off the poor.
Er, no. That’s not how it works.
The rich cannot “leech off the poor” because the poor are, well, poor. There’s nothing to leech off.
They’re poor, not destitute.
If the rich are not paying tax (or not paying as much as they should), but working-class people are (because the government of rich people forces them to), and the unemployed/sick/disabled are (via indirect taxation) – and the rich are enjoying the benefits of the services funded by public money, then the rich most definitely are leeching off the poor.
Get a grip, please.
What you mean is anyone who avoids paying tax (quite legally, remember) is reducing the total tax take. That is not in any way taking from the poor. It just means the total tax take is lower. Which is good.
The second half of your “argument” is that the “rich” are using public services “paid for” by the poor. No one who is “rich” would think of using the National Horror Service or educating their children in the local comprehensive. They go private and pay twice: Once to get the services they need, and once to fund public-sector “workers.” Which is bad.
“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.” Judge Learned Hand
If you want it to be different, lobby your MP to rescind ISAs.
Yes, reducing the total tax take is taking from the poor, because it limits the services that can be supported by those taxes.
You seem extremely limited in what you understand to be services funded by the poor. What about the £100 billion+ subsidy to the City every year, for example?
You’re absolutely right that rich people shouldn’t pay twice for education – so let’s end privately-funded schools altogether and bring them into the national system. These organisations are clearly receiving too much in any case as they claim charitable status – fraudulently, in This Writer’s opinion.
Who’s this ‘Judge Learned Hand’? He seems fictitious to me!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35977340
“No 10 said there were “no off-shore trusts or funds” that the prime minister or his immediate family would benefit from “in future”.”
Does that mean they have benefitted in the past?
Yes, of course. Cameron’s upbringing and education were at least partly-funded by his father’s tax avoidance.
Shock! Horror!
Parent pays his own money to educate his offspring. Doesn’t leech off the state!
For shame!
No – he was using our tax money that he didn’t pay. So he did leech off the state.
Your move, squire.
It’s not “our” tax money.
It’s money you’d like to tax, but there’s no law that makes it taxable.
(We’re talking tax _avoidance_ here, remember.)
Oh, it really is ours. That’s why everybody is so angry.
And remember, the companies that run the biggest tax avoidance schemes are also ‘helping’ the Treasury formulate tax law.
If that isn’t corruption, I don’t know what is.
good on you Mike give it to him !!
stephen mellor is the epitome of a moron. the taxpayers pay for equal access to public services paid by their taxes.these publicly owned services are available to all who need them including morons like him and severely ill people.
the rich and corrupt supported by imbeciles like him use the services after doing their utmost to avoid paying for them. jumping qeues is the focus of private health care and this includes profits for health insurance companies.
Idiots support this private system which includes stretching resources of the public system by provision of private wards made available within public hospitals.
private hospitals incompetence is bailed out by using public hospitals.
private hospitals are staffed for morons like mellor to abuse them thus there is a large turnover of nursing staff, inadequately paid and happier joining agencies or going abroad.
clearly Mellor has not got great reasoning intellect or insider knowledge and experience. if he did such idiocy and poor awareness would not be evident within information he posted.:-
Same principle applies in the education system. here the focus of academies is to dumb down snd control the masses so they dont rebel against the prison-guard mentality of managers recruited from the privately educated people and moronic tory supporters like Mellor. both education systems have curriculums intended to create people like mellor, those who follow blindly and yes men or those who embrace despondency or subserviency.
people like mellor think they know it all but delude themselves into believing they’ ll never be targeted.
Remember the holocaust dont be a moron all your life mellor wake up, open your eyes and be prepared to listen.
What was your argument again. Terry?
I saw that little speech he made, rather amusingly to a “bunch” of accountants. Didn’t believe a word of it. But then, I don’t believe anything Cameron says (unless I happen to KNOW it’s true of course).
He’ll wriggle out this like they always do, isn’t it funny that this blatant skulduggery that they’ve done is causing Camoron and his greedy party problems that they decide to realise the EU leaflets now, coincidence, I think not!