{"id":9336,"date":"2011-03-23T19:02:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T17:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=9336"},"modified":"2011-03-24T09:21:38","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T07:21:38","slug":"a-budget-for-tax-avoiders-everywhere-but-the-channel-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/03\/23\/a-budget-for-tax-avoiders-everywhere-but-the-channel-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"A budget for tax avoiders everywhere but the Channel Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have the following comment on the Guardian site<\/a> this afternoon:<\/p>\n

George Osborne said this was a budget to tackle avoidance. How wrong he was. Lawyers and accountants all over the country must be jumping for joy this afternoon \u2014 unless they're in the Channel Islands.<\/p>\n

Employee benefit trusts \u2014 often based in Jersey \u2014 are going to be hit hard by this budget, and rightly so. These are last remnants of the age-old pursuit of avoiding PAYE. If they're consigned to history Osborne's done at least one thing right.<\/p>\n

And Osborne gets full marks* for tackling another abuse long overdue to be abolished \u2014 which is the absurd industry shipping CDs, DVDs, computer memory and other items from the UK to the Channel Islands and then straight back again simply to avoid VAT. At least \u00a3200m a year was lost in this way \u2014 and countless fuel wasted. This is a reform that will cost consumers a little, cost Jersey and Guernsey a lot, and which will put jobs back on the high street.<\/p>\n

But after that it was almost all good news for tax avoiders. The new charity rules sound open to massive abuse \u2014 and the Charity Commission and HM Revenue & Customs will need massive resources to police them, which they haven't been given.<\/p>\n

The inheritance tax rules on gifts will be keeping will writers in business for years.<\/p>\n

A new 5.75% tax rate on the treasury functions of large corporations in tax havens (yes, you read that right \u2014 5.75%) will see corporate money flowing out of the UK faster than it will be possible to count.<\/p>\n

And big business gets more tax cuts for its foreign operations which will increase their tax planning opportunities almost endlessly.<\/p>\n

The same will be true for non-domiciled people \u2014 now able to bring money into the UK tax free through a new loophole for investment.<\/p>\n

Will this budget help beat tax avoidance? No, it won't. It's the biggest boost in the arm for the tax abuse industry that it's had in a long time. Osborne knows who his friends are.<\/p>\n

* Written before I'd read all the detail - now reduced to 5\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have the following comment on the Guardian site this afternoon: George Osborne said this was a budget to tackle avoidance. How wrong he was.
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336","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=9336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}