Comments on: Please use the UK tax amnesty, now

By: Tax Research UK / The Revenue will uncover them

Tax Research UK / The Revenue will uncover them — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:00:20 +0000

[...] Please use the UK tax amnesty, now [...]

By: Tax Research LLP

Tax Research LLP — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:28:11 +0000

Ian

You are right. But then I don’t allude to belief in fairies either.

The EU SD did not collect tax because it is known that there was a massive effort by the financial services industry to shift deposits to trusts, for example.

And candidly, I do think large parts (but not all) of the offshroe world condone evasion. Jersey’s new trust laws are specific evidence that the establishment does in that island. The evidence is published on this site.

As for data protection rights - these are established by law and nothing more. Society rightly wants protection from thiefs. And so it should. That’s why the vast majority of people do not trust offshore, those who use it, and those who supply the services that are available there. We rightly call them corruption services.

Try as I might I can foresee no net loss to society if the offshore world shut down, entirely.

Richard

By: Ian

Ian — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:59:55 +0000

You never once allude to the possibility that the level of avoidance might be lower than estimated. The amount of withholding tax generated in Switzerland, Luxembourg and the British Isles centres under the EUSD turned out lower than expected (albeit massive funds did move to Singapore and other centres to avoid the provisions).

Of course evasion goes on. It always has done and it always will. It’s not right, and despite what you might think, it’s not condoned by those of us working in the finance centres offshore. But the fact is, there is nothing wrong in a UK resident having a bank account offshore PROVIDED the income is reported on the self assessment return. Whose to say most of them don’t report their offshore income?

If I was one of those 400,000 people, and I had declared my offshore income in the proper way, I’d be mightily p**sed off that my bank had breached my data protection rights by not keeping my confidential and legitimate safe in an offshore location.