Tony Blair ‘blocked Non-doms Tax’

[RajD]

The man who used to talk about narrowing the gap between the rich and poor:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/poli...icle3512216.ece

[mightytharg]

The man who used to talk about narrowing the gap between the rich and poor:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/poli...icle3512216.ece

Non-doms can be poor too, you thieving xenophobic scumbag.

[RajD]

Non-doms can be poor too, you thieving xenophobic scumbag.

(couldn't find an emoticon scratching head while looking confused) What are you on about? You'd rather that they continue to fiddle their way out of paying tax?

Edited - Added quote because you couldn't be bothered to read the linked article:

Allies of Tony Blair have revealed that he repeatedly blocked attempts by Gordon Brown to impose new taxes on rich foreigners living in Britain

[laurejon]

All last week, Bono was in court in Dublin arguing about a stetson. It was his trademark hat, as essential a part of the brand that is Bono as his compassion for starving Africans. His former stylist, Lola Cashman, says he gave the hat to her as thanks for her hard work. He looked like Nana Mouskouri before she remodelled him and it is outrageous, she says, for Bono to claim now that she stole it so she could sell it and make money which was rightfully his.

The learned judges of Ireland have a duty to apply their fine minds to the case with due seriousness. What is surprising is that the rest of the world continues to take Bono seriously. I would have thought that after the revelation that U2 moved their music publishing company to the Netherlands to cut their tax bill in half, he wouldn't have dared stepped out of his mansion for fear of being laughed to scorn.

Here was a man who incited audiences to condemn Western politicians for not sending enough of their taxpayers' money to the wretched of the earth, avoiding tax himself. The Edge, U2's guitarist, sounded as edgy as a plump accountant in the 19th hole when he explained the move offshore by saying: 'Our business is a very complex business. Of course we're trying to be tax-efficient. Who doesn't want to be tax-efficient?'

The practical consequences of being 'tax-efficient' are many. If you say you care about Africa, why are you paying fees to international money movers who encourage Africa's 'tax-efficient' kleptomaniacs to hide their loot in tax havens? You are also forcing fellow citizens, who didn't make U2's estimated $110m in 2005, to pick up the bill, not only for foreign aid, but for education, health, law and order and defence.

And all the time while others suffer on your behalf, you maintain that you are behaving reasonably. ('Who doesn't want to be tax-efficient?' as the Edge said.) The members of U2 aren't the only humbugs. Less noticed than the legal arguments over the ownership of Bono's hat was a loud assault on Labour's attempts to make the wealthy pay their taxes. The press, most notably the Times, spent the week insisting that Gordon Brown must listen to the City or pay the price. The CBI said the relationship between the Revenue and Customs and the financial sector has 'deteriorated' because of 'attacks on previously accepted tax practices on the pretext of clamping down on anti-avoidance measures'.

John Cullinane at the Chartered Institute of Taxation demanded a 'taxpayers' charter,' , which, I suppose, would give his clients more leeway, while the management consultants at KPMG said that although there was a case for restraint in 'tax planning' (ie tax avoidance), it couldn't be made if tax administrators 'assert that they are the arbiters of what constitutes compliance and acceptability'.

We need to be clear about what provoked the anger of the City's leaders. They were not arguing about whether income and corporation taxes are too high, a question about which serious people can disagree in good faith, but about whether it was right for the banks and accountancy firms to advise those with enough money to hire them how not to pay tax at whatever level it is set. The Treasury and Revenue and Customs insist that management consultants, accountants, lawyers and bankers must check that their tax-avoidance schemes are legal. A small requirement, you might think, but not for over-mighty subjects, who resent any constraint on their behaviour

People I spoke to in the City said they were tired of being 'demonised' for a shortfall in tax revenues that is forcing the Chancellor to push up the taxes people who can't afford 'tax planners' must pay. Of course, they added, everyone accepts that democratic societies have the right to enforce the law.

They might, but do others in the City? The freedom to avoid taxes goes to its heart. On the one hand, the fantastic inflation in salaries and bonuses means that, for instance, individual partners in the big four accountancy firms can afford to set up elaborate schemes on their own behalf. On the other, the selling of tax-avoidance schemes to others is a lucrative line of business for their firms.

Go back to KPMG's claim that tax administrators have no right to 'assert that they are the arbiters of what constitutes compliance and acceptability' and notice its brazenness. As Richard Murphy of Tax Justice Network points out, governments' tax authorities are the sole arbiters of what constitutes compliance and acceptability as long as they are correctly enforcing the laws of democratic parliaments. KPMG doesn't have to accept the rule of law because it can tell governments that if it doesn't do what its clients want, those clients will take their money offshore.

Bizarrely, the Tories allowed KPMG to be involved in its tax reform commission. Unsurprisingly, the commission recommended tax cuts last week that would generally favour the wealthy. Ominously, the Tories may win the next election. If they do, U2 would be rank ingrates if they didn't perform at the celebration party.

Iran not a rogue state? Get real Ming

Students and Iranian exiles say that they will demonstrate against the award of an honorary degree to former Iranian President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami by Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader and Chancellor of St Andrews University.

They are being unkind to a broken man. Khatami is the Iranian Kerensky; he took office with a mandate to push back the power of the ayatollahs, but wasn't strong enough to fight off totalitarian forces. True, a mass incarceration of Iranian democrats marked his presidency, but the persecuted liberals were his supporters whom he was too feeble to defend.

The protesters would do better to ask hard questions of Sir Menzies. Last year, furious Iranians formed picket lines outside his party's Westminster headquarters because Baroness Emma Nicholson had decided that the Islamic republic was 'an advanced form of democracy for the region', while another Lib Dem peer had asserted that human rights in Iran should not be compared with Western human rights standards. Sir Menzies gave no sign that he wanted to stand up to theocracy when he wrote in the Guardian that 'Iran is not a rogue state'.

I go on about the Lib Dems under Sir Menzies because they reflect, albeit in an extreme form, a hypocritical relativism which is endemic in mainstream European opinion. They think they are being liberal when they imply it is an act of cultural imperialism to demand that the same human rights standards should apply in the poor world as the rich world.

The patter sounds very tolerant until you realise that it is no different from Kipling's argument on imperialism that freedom was the white man's birthright but not for 'lesser breeds without the law'.

Why divorce is a high-risk strategy

Heather Mills' claim that Paul McCartney attacked her isn't just mud-slinging, but reflects a change in the law which allows allegedly battered wives to receive larger divorce settlements. This is a change that is all for the good: convictions for domestic violence are notoriously scarce, so the right to sue in the civil courts feels like an advance.

But if you are to find the money to fight, you must first get very successful divorce solicitors to assure a bank that it will get its loan back. Once you have the money, you must keep your nerve for months as the legal and living expenses rack up and your ex-husband piles on the pressure to settle quietly.

The reform is all for the good, but high-stakes divorce remains a game that only tough women with great expectations of wealth can play.

[switters]

yeah, I agree. Bono, Brad Pitt, Beckham, all those super rich celebrities who wouldn't know poverty if it came knocking to take away their last possessions, lecturing the world on poverty. Newsflash people, to have rich people you need... poor people! I'd have listened to them if they had all given 1/2 (still leaving them obscenely rich) of their money to the poor. C*^ts, the lot of them!

[laurejon]

yeah, I agree. Bono, Brad Pitt, Beckham, all those super rich celebrities who wouldn't know poverty if it came knocking to take away their last possessions, lecturing the world on poverty. Newsflash people, to have rich people you need... poor people! I'd have listened to them if they had all given 1/2 (still leaving them obscenely rich) of their money to the poor. C*^ts, the lot of them!

Its amazing Geldoff and Bono both lobby Governments to spend taxpayers money on the third world, whilst they evade paying taxes themselves!!!!.