{"id":13604,"date":"2012-01-13T08:40:17","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T08:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=13604"},"modified":"2012-01-13T08:40:17","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T08:40:17","slug":"the-tax-profession-tax-havens-and-fraud-an-ongoing-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/01\/13\/the-tax-profession-tax-havens-and-fraud-an-ongoing-saga\/","title":{"rendered":"The tax profession, tax havens and fraud: an ongoing saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Telegraph reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Treasury has closed a tax avoidance scheme that could have cost \u00a31.5bn after a tip off that artificial trading companies were being set up in tax havens.<\/p>\n

Wealthy individuals were planning to use a long-standing \u201cpost-cessation trade relief\u201d \u2014 designed for tradesman and professionals to offset legitimate costs against their income \u2014 to artificially reduce their tax bills.<\/p>\n

It is understood that tax experts planned to raise fake expenditure requests from a tax haven that could be claimed against by individuals in the UK.<\/p>\n

David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary, said the schemes would have put a \u201csignificant\u201d amount of money at risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unacceptable, at a time when we are trying to bring down the deficit, that there are those who try to avoid paying the tax they owe,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David Gauke and I don't often agree: on this one we do.<\/p>\n

Let's not beat about the bush, what was proposed here was fraud.<\/p>\n

Who proposed the fraud? Tax professionals did.<\/p>\n

Where were they going to locate the fraud? In tax havens.<\/p>\n

How were they going to get away with it?\u00a0Because\u00a0tax haven secrecy - the total opacity on the\u00a0ownership, control and accounts of offshore companies that they provide - would have let them do so.<\/p>\n

And you winder why I and the\u00a0Tax Justice Network\u00a0campaign\u00a0against tax havens?\u00a0They remain what they always have been, a home for fraud assisted by a pinstripe mafia of lawyers,\u00a0accountants\u00a0and bankers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Telegraph reports: The Treasury has closed a tax avoidance scheme that could have cost \u00a31.5bn after a tip off that artificial trading companies
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,14,80,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounting","category-corruption","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-tax-havens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}