A baronness to add to the Damehood and the wife’s ladyship. You’d sorta thing that someone laden with so many titles might actually know something:
The investigation has prompted calls for a parliamentary investigation and for the two empires to be folded into the crown estate, which sends its profits to the government. The king and Prince William pay income tax on profits from the estates after business expenses have been deducted, but both now refuse to say how much.
….
Baroness Margaret Hodge, a former chair of the Commons public accounts committee, said the duchies should at least pay corporation tax. “This would be a brilliant time for the monarch to say, I’m going to be open, and I want to be treated as fairly as anybody,” she said.
Knowing something would suggest that not much would change. If the incorporate, pay coproation tax, then the profits are paid out as dividends, then the tax position is pretty much the same as it you were a limited partnership and took the profits slightly more directly. Sure, not exactly, but it’s a difference at the margin.
Also, one damn good reason whu het Duchies don’t pay corporation tax is that – of course – they’re not corporations.
Hodge is one of tnose loathsome grifters who always manages to fail upwards.
Her track record of failure is stupendous to behold.
Hodge is a scumbag but even scumbags are right now and then.
Though she’s wrong here – King Big Ears von Sausagefingeren and his wanker of a son should not merely be taxed, they should have all their land and homes and property confiscated.
They can be relocated to a three bed semi in Southport and helped to live a sustainable green lifestyle of bus travel, fake meat, and no central heating.
That does leave the question of what to do with the land – sold off to build homes for migrants, perhaps.
Does not Lady Lady Lady have a history of obfuscating her tax affairs?
@Interested: “Hodge is a scumbag but even scumbags are right now and then.”
*channels innrer Aragorn* But today is not that day.
I’m sure everyone on here is aware of this lady’s world class chutzpah but just in case:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-20582040
The chair of the Public Accounts Committee is to take action over claims about the tax affairs of a company started by her father, where her brother is executive chairman and she holds shares.
Margaret Hodge told Jo Coburn that the allegations about the Stemcor firm were “completely wrong”, adding that they were “scurrilous and defamatory”.
Newspapers have questioned the amount of tax paid by the firm, while the MP criticises large multinationals – such as Amazon, Google and Starbucks – about the amount they pay in the UK.
That was over 12 years ago. Does anyone recall if she actually did incur the expenditure of instructing m’learned friend or was she then as now all talk?
Here’s the FT at around the same time:-
Margaret Hodge, former head of Britain’s parliamentary public accounts committee, was among the beneficiaries in 2011 of the winding-up of a Liechtenstein foundation that held shares in Stemcor, the private steel-trading business set up by Hans Oppenheimer, her father.
The shares were brought onshore using a scheme, known as the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility, that offered reduced penalties and no risk of prosecution for Britons moving undeclared assets back to the UK.
Ms Hodge said she had not been a beneficiary of the Liechtenstein foundation until the shares were brought onshore using the LDF in 2011, and that she had not played a role in setting up or running it.
But the disclosure, reported by The Times, has exposed her to charges of hypocrisy. At issue is whether she should have been more transparent and made a public statement about her interest sooner.
Ms Hodge became one of the UK’s best known politicians in the last parliament by denouncing businesses and individuals over their tax arrangements, and criticising Revenue & Customs for its handling of avoidance. But she has previously made no public statement about the use of offshore vehicles or the LDF associated with the family shareholdings.
Her committee has been particularly critical of the lenient terms offered by the LDF, not least last month during its investigation into alleged tax evasion by clients of HSBC’s Swiss bank.
A committee report said: “We are concerned that the current system still causes the odds to be stacked in favour of tax evaders using offshore accounts when the worst that will happen if they are caught is that they will pay the tax they owe and a fine.”
Of course special people should be open and honest about their income. Our noble (theoretically) PM even advertised his income sources in Hansard when his department insisted on The Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013. Naturally, the tax arrangements may not be to Lady Lady Lady Hodge’s liking as a staunch socialist but they are in keeping with her actions as a socialist, which as we all know, are rarely in accord…
It is, of course, now Lady, Lady Margaret, Lady Hodge
Why does it have to be? Just call her Mrs. Hodge. By the same token, if I were in the UK, I’d refer to the sitting PM as Mr. Starmer or Mr. Keir.
@ Ted S
In which case they might call you Alfred with the same degree of precision.
“the crown estate, which sends its profits to the government”: by God it’s not often the Guardian admits that. Normally it implies that all the income goes the Charles the Daft.
Do you suppose the Guardian has a Big Book of Lies that its writers are meant to hew to?
I’m curious why the standard of spelling and grammar are so much higher at Tim’s substack. Might one be written ante aperitif and one post?
More proofreading not more or less proof
Dear Mr Worstall
I have a vague memory that a past King did a deal with the then government that his personal income would be exempt from income tax in exchange for which he relinquished his rights to the income from the Crown Estates, save for a portion to pay for the expenses of the Royal Household to cover the costs of the Royal Family’s official duties, known as the Civil List. The costs of the Royal Yacht Britannia were covered by the Royal Navy on the basis that it was a naval vessel.
I should have thought that when Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth started to pay tax on her personal income that the income from the Crown Estates should have reverted to the Monarch and the government left with the taxes on that.
If this is the case, it seems our beloved government™ simply carried on what it does best, which is to steal, rob and extort as much of other people’s money as it can so it can continue pissing as much of everyone else’s money on its pet projects for the benefit of government egos and its mates.
DP