Gary Barlow and tax avoidance

They all make me sick, so angry I cannot articulate coherently. Then HMRC hound pensioners and 'hardworking families' for money they often do not owe, because HMRC make a lot of mistakes.

"Tax avoidance/ evasion would be a matter of conscience in most of us. Is there not a phrase about innocence being no defence in law? "

No, there isn't. It's ignorance that@s said to be no defence. But what the hell - there has been no crime committed here! Avoidance of tax is legal and sensible - or does anyone here write to their tax office and say 'I don't think you have charged me enough for having a job - I'd like to send you some more'?

No, I thought not.

This reminds me of Lester Piggott and Ken Dodd. They both avoided paying tax. One lost his knighthood and was sentenced to prison, the other got nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

They were both charged with tax fraud/evasion. Lester Piggott was found guilty, whereas Ken Dodd was not.

Yup Tegan the same 'call me Dave' who said they knew how it was to juggle life and work, because after all, his wife works part time.....yeah right, as a part time artistic director or whatever to Smithson's the stationery people, dont know how they manage really as she only gets paid in excess of £200,000 for doing it. Maybe they get tax credits.

Feetlebaum, whilst I would be most indignant to have paid too much tax, I would be conscientious about paying what I owe. It would worry me to think I had not and that I would be hounded by HMRC.

DH was once told he owed over £5, 000 in tax; we could not understand how as he was PAYE and always told them of any change. We had to employ an accountant to sort it out; he did not owe it, but it was a worrying time.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/05/12/tax-and-all-that/

There are tax incentive schemes that were designed to encourage people to invest in legitimate businesses. But this particular scheme - and it appears many others - was found to be bogus. Its whole purpose was not to enable a genuine business to get off the ground but to provide a means for avoiding tax. So for those who say "what's the problem, it's perfectly legitimate to try to lower your tax bill", I think the point is, though the principle may be legitimate, the scheme itself was not.

I temped in tax barristers' chambers some years ago and was horrified to see the sorts of tricky legal manoeuvres that are used to avoid paying tax - such as selling a company for a couple of weeks and then buying it back (I didn't understand how this reduced tax liability but it did) - perfectly legal but completely unethical.

jingle At the moment in the UK, nobody pays more than 45% income tax. I believe I'm right in saying that the basic rate is 20%, those earning more than £32,000 pay 40% and those earning more than £150,000 pay a maximum of 45%, however much they earn. Anyway, no matter how low the top rate of tax is, it seems that many wealthy people are loathe to pay anything. metro.co.uk/2012/04/15/multi-millionaires-hand-over-less-than-cleaners-new-tax-figures-reveal-389124/

I think paying 50% income tax if you earn, say, £13 million a year would not be unreasonable and should be re-introduced.

Nobody likes paying tax, and there are many legal schemes to avoid paying it. Fortunes are made and vast amounts of tax saved by doing just that. There is no morality in this at all but there is risk. If the tax avoidance schemes are found to be illegal then the rich person gets caught. Good! The rest of us on PAYE have no choice, our bit of tax is just grabbed by the state.

As regards charity donations yes they are fine, but its very easy to donate if you've managed to save huge amounts of tax. So why should you then expect to receive medals, awards and plaudits for doing so? The more you look into it, you realise that we live in a dirty little hypocritical world, and the innocent usually suffer. However, there are many good people about, and they often operate quietly behind the scenes. I have no time for high-profile charity do-gooders out just to magnify their own reputations.

Why would you not try to avoid paying tax if you could, so long as the means is legitimate? Surely it is up to HMRC to close loop holes.

I can't imagine that Gary Barlow found this scheme for himself but relied on his professional advisors to help him!

This whole thing makes me sick. We were hounded to the ends of the earth by HMRC when we were unable to pay a £3,500 corporation tax bill due to a customer going bust owing us over £19,000. The HMRC were nothing short of evil insisting that we sell the company van, remortgage our house, sell personal effects, eat less (I kid you not) and cut out luxuries ! The whole thing almost caused me to have a nervous breakdown. We offered to pay in 3/4 installments but that was not good enough they needed their pound of flesh (plus interest for late payment obviously) We did manage to borrow the money eventually and they got every last penny. Aftwrwards I spoke to our MP about it and he suggested that we make a formal complaint against the lady robot who dealt with us but we decided against it for obvious reasons.

Sorry for going off subject.

Gillybob Although not as extreme a case as yours, I too have had dealings with HMRC over similar amounts of Corporation Tax. I was waiting for a couple of clients to pay me, and sent HMRC two payments of £1000 on account a week apart. I got atrocious letters from them, threatening debt collection etc. I did pay the balance, about two weeks after the due date, plus daily interest, but it angered me that this particular tax is a tax on success and hard work. I assume that like me, you would like to know how The Ritz hotel pays NO CORPORATION TAX at all, which makes Gary Barlow's dubious tax avoidance scheme look like small change

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes my blood boil GillT57 although I can quite believe it of The Ritz and probably thousands more high profile companies like it. There is a common misconception with corporation tax that the profit is "money in the bank" whereas in our case it is more often than not book debts and/or work in hand and stock which are worthless until they are sold and paid for. Corporation tax for micro businesses such as ours is counter productive when the "money" would do better reinvested into the company to help it grow and employ people.

My DH was self employed and was twice called into the tax office for "interview" when they suggested he was not paying enough tax. At one point the interviewer suggested I was spending too much money on food! My DH replied that with the job he had he couldn't live on sausages and pies. We had even had to list my jewellery and any paintings we had (DH loved auctions and often picked up paintings cheaply - no great masterpieces unfortunately!). Each time it was found that we owed no tax but it involved us in having to pay additional accountants fees.

This left me so worried that even now with my income greatly reduced I still get the accountant to do my return every year as I have a dread that 10 years down the road HMRC will come along and say I owe them money.

I think HMRC pick on the little man/woman because they are unlikely to have high powered accountants to argue their corner.

Part of me can understand the likes of Gary Barlow trying to reduce his tax liability but perhaps he could consider reducing the cost of the tickets to his concerts and the merchandise sold in his name, thereby reducing his income and his tax liability.

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/pcs-public-and-commercial-services-union/article/tax-workers-balloted-for-strikes-over-damaging-cuts&sa=U&ei=O_hzU9-1Isut7QbAtoGwAg&ved=0CAYQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNEAqMQj0uk9xU7n1HYQVS2GOkDRkA

This is why HMRC cannot do the job properly.

My experience with HMRC have nothing at all to do with job cuts Durhamjen this was in no way a political issue. It was a simple case of a bad person enjoying the power of the job she was doing. Quite honestly I cannot think of one positive experience I have ever had when dealing with them. I think a lesson in humility,decency and customer services might do some of them a lot of good. Oh and the reality that they are just doing a job like anyone else they do not get to play judge,jury and god over ordinary peoples lives.

Throughout our lives we have to deal with various agencies and companies, so we know the difference between good and bad service when we meet it. I can honestly say that HMRC make British Gas and BT Vodafone Customer Services look first rate.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with job cuts, HMRC have always had a reputation as rude and insensitive. The only difference I can see is that in the last decade we've been made aware that certain corporations have been allowed to get away with tax avoidance in a scale that makes the bankers' bonuses pale into insignificance.

Yes, it's one law for individuals and small businesses and another for those like The Ritz.

Exactly Aka . Our MP suggested we make a formal complaint against HMRC something that we decided not to do for fear of repercussions. Why should one person/department be able to get away with treating honest, hardworking people in such a way ? I asked one particular person how she slept at night after she had reduced me to tears, her answer was very well thank you.

The fact that you know the big corporations are getting away with paying millions and the likes of Bernie Ecclestone do "sweetheart deals" ending up in them paying a mere fraction of what they owe, only goes to show that there is infact one law for the very rich and another for the ordinary man/ woman.

When DH was told he owed over £5,000 to HMRC (which he did not) we spoke to an official who told us airily that it was up to DH to make sure he was paying the correct amount of tax (he was PAYE).
Eventually, after a long discussion with her and still being unable to find out where it had all gone wrong over years, she said that 'It's a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing as more than one tax office is involved'. So I asked her how she could expect a layperson to understand how it worked if the HMRC themselves could not get it right.

We had to employ an accountant to sort it out.

We should all be very worried about proposed new legislation that will allow HMRC to dip straight into your bank account and take whatever they like if they think you have an unpaid tax bill. They get it wrong so often I can only see misery ahead.

The problem with HMRC is they believe everyone is guilty until they can prove themselves otherwise. You have to prove you have not earned a certain amount of money - but I was always taught you could not prove a negative. When I mentioned this to a tax inspector I was told that wasn't his problem!

I don't think any of them have any idea of how a business works. One asked for copies of all quotes and invoices sent out over a certain period, these were supplied and he then said that some of the quotes had not been invoiced! It had to be pointed out to him that when quotes are sent you don't always win the contract!

Where do they find them?

We should all be very worried about proposed new legislation that will allow HMRC to dip straight into your bank account and take whatever they like if they think you have an unpaid tax bill. They get it wrong so often I can only see misery ahead

I can envisage a lot of withdrawals from bank accounts and people going back to keeping their money in their homes.

It is a very scary proposal.

Surely it is against our human rights?

They can already do this with drug criminals.... ah but they have just been found guilty in a court of law... that's the difference.