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November 2016

Marmite says Zac? My Dad used to own that

Not quite the greatest insult ever in the annals of political history.

Unknown LibDem Richmond candidate Sarah Olney has used her first national newspaper interview to launch a clumsy attack on Zac Goldsmith’s wealth. Speaking to the MoS, Olney went after Zac over the money he inherited from his dad, claiming he won’t understand what it means if the price of Marmite goes up.

Sir Jams did used to own Marmite after all.

So, yes, Ritchie is ignorant then

The National Audit Office issued a report yesterday that suggested that one in three of the richest people in Britain is under investigation by HM Revenue & Customs with the total tax subject to enquiry amounting to £1.9bn. Headlines have followed.

There are issues to raise here. First, the fact that there has been only one prosecution resulting from investigations of the UK’s super rich is staggering: it is very clear that there have been significant numbers of tax haven abuse investigations that have been settled by cosy deals sanctioned during the Hartnett era at HMRC that have left the impression that for tax purposes there is one rule for the rich and other for everyone else.

Apparently Richie doesn’t know that this is long standing policy. Determined by the politicians:

*sigh*

It’s known as the ‘Hansard extract’.

An undertaken given, at the start of an HMRC investigation, that if full co-operation and full disclosure are given then HMRC will NOT prosecute.

This works well. Taxpayers want to co-operate, courts are under less pressure, HMRC resources are used at what they are supposed to be doing. Getting money in.

Why’s in called the “Hansard Extract”? Because it is quite literally an extract from Hansard from a statement made in the House of Commons. First made on 5 October 1944 as official government policy and subsequently re-affirmed many times since.

That’s official government policy. If you co-operate, we won’t prosecute.

Which is why so few cases end in prosecution.

The idea that there’s only been one ‘scalp’ is utter nonsense There will have been lots of settlements where people co-operated.

If people want more cases (such as Harry Rednap’s) which achieved nothing then fine, go ahead. No extra tax will be collected, no penalties higher than would be achieved in a civil settlement.

What fun!

Donald Trump avoided paying potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes in a way even his own lawyers considered questionable, according to a report.

The New York Times said the manoeuvre may also explain how the Republican presidential candidate posted a one-year loss of more than $900m a few years later, enabling him to avoid paying federal income taxes for perhaps 18 years.

At issue is how billionaire property tycoon Mr Trump was able to cancel hundreds of millions of debt as his casino empire in Atlantic City went broke in the early 1990s.
Cancelled debt is generally treated as taxable income, meaning Mr Trump would have owed the Internal Revenue Service significant money on debt that his creditors forgave.

The newspaper said it obtained documents from 25 years ago showing Mr Trump essentially traded the debt relief for nearly worthless “partnership equity” to avoid any tax liability.

In practice, the strategy was almost identical to a tax move that was already outlawed, but differed in minor details. Mr Trump’s own lawyers advised him the IRS would be likely to find it improper if he were audited, the paper said, and Congress explicitly outlawed the manoeuvre in 2004.

So it was legal before 2004 then?

Nope, not the same. Similar, equal, but different

The researchers discovered that the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-HT) and the hormone arginine-vasopressin (AVP) act in opposite ways in males and females to influence aggression and dominance.

Because dominance and aggressiveness have been linked to stress resistance, these findings may influence the development of more effective gender-specific treatment strategies for stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders.

“These results begin to provide a neurochemical basis for understanding how the social brain works quite differently in males and females,” said lead researcher Elliott Albers, Professor at Georgia State University in the US.

Now just to get the SJWs to accept what every adult has always known.

First thing a Czech would say on reading this story – Gyppoes

Not that they actually use the work Gyppoes of course, they’re ruder than that. The contempt which can be packed into the word Cikán is wondrous to behold and there are worse synonyms.

Czech ‘godmother’, 36, and her family trafficked eight men into the UK and treated them as slaves, taking their wages, forcing them to sleep in a garage and forage in bins for food
Five members of a Czech family trafficked Eastern Europeans into Britain
Gang pocketed their wages and benefits while they treated men as ‘slaves’
Forced them to sleep in cupboards and forage for leftover food in bins
‘Godmother’ Ruzena Tancosova and ‘enforcer’ Petr Tancos got six years
Martin Tancos got three years and his partner Katerina Kuriova got two
Petr’s partner Nela Dzurkova got 30 months at Plymouth Crown Court

Here it is, nine paragraphs down:

The Roma family

So what’s really happening here then?

Just one super rich tax cheat nailed in seven years: HMRC unit probes 2,000 for dodging £2bn by hiding money offshore or in avoidance schemes
A 380-strong taskforce was set up to catch out wealthy tax dodgers
But the HM Revenue & Customs unit has claimed one scalp in seven years
It comes as more than 2,000 people are suspected of dodging £2billion

Might it be that there’s not much tax evasion going on?

All who have done business overseas are most surprised

Rolls-Royce plc, Britain’s leading manufacturing multinational, hired a network of agents to help it land lucrative contracts in at least 12 different countries around the world, sometimes allegedly using bribes.

An investigation by the Guardian and the BBC has uncovered leaked documents and testimony from insiders that suggest that Rolls-Royce may have benefited from the use of illicit payments to boost profits for years.

Shocked even.

But not shocked that it happened, shocked that anyone would think it didn’t.

Seriously folks, certain Johnny Foreigners really are different.

We know who will be frotting himself senseless over this

Britain’s wealthiest people owe the taxman as much as £1.9billion, the National Audit Office has found in the wake of Theresa May’s pledge to crackdown on tax avoidance.

The spending watchdog said that one in six of Britain’s 6,500 wealthiest individuals have used tax avoidance schemes and admitted that HMRC has found investing whether they are paying the right amount “challenging”.

The use of a tax avoidance scheme does not show that tax is ue. Some forms of tax avoidance do actually work, after all.

Quite marvellous whatabouttery here

The embattled director of the FBI has been accused of covering up evidence of Donald Trump’s links to Russia while inflicting severe damage on Hillary Clinton, as Democrats hit back in a growing scandal involving her email server.

Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the Senate, accused James Comey of “a disturbing double standard” and, in a remarkably forthright letter, said he regretted supporting a man who he once believed was “a principled public servant.”

Having links with Russia ain’t a crime….