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This is hilarious

Julian Richer funds a tax whingeing protest group led by Ritchie’s friend, Brooks.

Julian Richer has just sold his company using a structure that means no capital gains nor income tax liabilities on the sum received.

No, really:

Isn’t This Tax Abuse? Julian Richer Sells Richer Sounds Without Paying Capital Gains Tax

But of course this is different. Entrepreneur cashes in his life’s work without paying capital gains or income tax. Yes, that’s obviously different because reasons.

Julian Richer is entirely and absolutely obeying the law here. What’s going to be interesting though is the reaction from those tax campaigners who complain so bitterly when others do exactly the same, entirely and wholly obey the law.

Think about Arcadia, Taveta and all that for a moment. Tina, Lady Green, does not pay UK tax on the dividends she receives. This is loudly condemned. It has most certainly been called tax abuse, tax dodging and tax avoidance. The reason she doesn’t pay that UK tax is because she’s a foreigner living in a foreign country.

But this is different because, right? Even, tax abuse and tax compliance all depend upon who is doing it?

6 thoughts on “This is hilarious”

  1. I am sure that Ritchie, the Tax Justice Network, the Fair Tax Mark, Oxfam and Christian Aid will publicly denounce this.

    Probably in the same way they denounced the Guardian’s use of Luxembourg tax rulings and tax exempt capital gains, the Co-op’s use of tax havens and the Miliband and Benn family’s inheritance tax planning.

  2. Andrew S. Mooney

    …Employee ownership is something to be encouraged, surely?

    That way, weirdos like Richie really cannot say that “those capitalist bastards are screwing the workers,” because the workers now are the capitalist bastards….

  3. Tim, the difference between tax tevasion and tax avoidance is the thickness of a prison wall (or a bankruptcy plea when someone has been misadvised and spent some of the money – e.g. Rangers).
    I avoid paying higher-rate tax by using Gift Aid: is that tax abuse? Maybe but even Murphy evades condemning me for that.
    If it’s sanctioned by the government it’s legal and not abuse: the first such tax-free capital gains case I encountered was taking advantage of a concession specifically created by Gordon Brown (that wasn’t the reason for the sale – they were accepting an attractive price for a non-core activity. So Julian Richer’s sale is legal and unobjectionable, but any holier-than-thou comments henceforth should be met with as hail of rotten tomatoes

  4. “…someone has been misadvised and spent some of the money – e.g. Rangers).”

    The advice was sound. Rangers didn’t follow it.

    EBT tax planning worked on the basis that loans were theoretically re-payable. The footballers’ agents didn’t like this and insisted on side-agreements that the loans were not repayable. So obviously they weren’t loans.

    All irrelevant now due to the new loan charge.

  5. john 77

    Aah but Professor Murhy has made it clear that tax relief for pension contributioms is a subsidy, paying school fees for your childrens’ education is tantamount to promoting eugenics and raising the IT threshold disenfranchises the the poor.

    We stepped through the looking glass years ago, catch up!

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