VICTIMLESS CRIMES - TAX EVASION

TAX FIDDLES ARE VICTIMLESS CRIMES.

 Oh no they are not!

TIME TO GET ANGRY AND TAKE ACTION
TO REPATRIATE OUR ASSETS.

It might have been true 50 years ago that one rich and powerful British autocrat shovelling money into tax-havens had little impact on a country’s socio-economic system. But now it has reached plague levels, causing mass unemployment in developed and undeveloped nations, it is sabotaging the work of all of us – and killing the prospects for the next generations who are our children and grandchildren. The plague is stealing our time, our days and our lives – merely by fiddling the books.

Every executive Tom Dick and Harriet with their sticky fingers in corporate tills, in small and large organisations, has been persuaded by “tax-planners”, who are often also their auditors, that making up invoices, contracts and transactions to gouge out profits and capital from the real business to brass-plates pretend businesses or pretend non-domiciled persons in tax-havens – is legal. It is not. At best such manoeuvres are merely cheating the whole nation and the shareholders by deception (wire fraud); at worst such creating of two sets of books is criminal False Accounting and usually Fraudulent Conspiracy. Siphoning away capital and assets via false accounting and freezing them in tax-havens while the perpetrators sit on their fat sweaty hands and refuse to reinvest – is criminal.

The victims of these crimes are now easily identified; they include all the unemployed youngsters in the developed world and many of the unemployed older generation in crippled, illiquid countries such as Greece, Spain and the UK. The Lagarde List of 2,059 Greeks with once secret Swiss bank accounts reveals that one of the “family” accounts contains or contained $500 million. If that is typical and is the average, the whole gang of them have exported $1,029,500,000,000 – about $1 trillion - from Athens to Zurich. Instead, the money could create 6,500,000 (six and a half million) jobs in Greece at $30,000 a year for 5 years. That would get the economy going again. Money has to circulate, not stagnate.

The USA, the UK and most OECD nations are “in debt”; often described as mountains of debt – which we have to borrow back from “The Free Markets”. Why is Britain, which is in the top seven global economies and has been hugely successful since the Industrial Revolution of 1770, in debt? Why is the largest economy in the world in debt? Why is Spain in debt? Why is Greece bankrupt? Where do the “Free Markets” which include organised crime cartels, get the Rivers of Cash to lend us to meet our mountains of debt? They get it from the off-shore tax havens - who get it from our High Streets. We are borrowing back our own money.

It is time for a major push to repatriate the tax-haven assets – and put the money back to work. It is time to get very, very angry at all the bent bookkeepers.

(For those innocent business people who have been duped into “tax-planning - which is of course all strictly legal” take comfort from your tax-planners’ Professional Indemnity Insurance which might pay all the costs of a back-duty-case, which are often enormous.)

TAX AND ECONOMY - ARCHIVE - JAN13

Letter to Ex-Treasury Minister and Member of Parliament for Oxford-East, Rt Hon Andrew Smith MP.

7 February 2013.

Dear Andrew,

UK TAX AVOIDANCE AND EVASION – TAX-HAVENS

Thank you for your letter of 5^th February 2013, enclosing a reply (attached as JPEGS) dated 25 Jan 2013 from David Gauke, HM Treasury, to my query (below) about taxing tax-haven assets; and thank you for continuing to press this matter.

It is most encouraging that an extra £5 billion and another £9 billion per year – totalling £22 billion, is expected to be collected from tax-havens by a new centre of excellence with £1 billion more resources for tax compliance.

However, of the $21 trillion assets in tax-havens, estimated by the OECD, TJN and Christian Aid, it is likely that at least $2 trillion has been transferred from UK High Streets, depleting UK liquidity.  The £22 billion or US$34.7 billion is 1.7% of those estimated UK funds siphoned to tax-havens.  

The UK Treasury should therefore increase its recovery targets by 59 times. It is my professional view that most of the $2 trillion could be recovered through aggressive HMRC Back-Duty-Tax cases, rescinding tax-reliefs previously granted on “funny-money” contracts and invoices, from self-evidently false, but allegedly active & commercial, units in tax-havens - sent to siphon profits and capital from UK trading activities.  

Such back-duty cases are more likely to succeed if the professional authors of the original “tax-planning” schemes, who now are consultants to or sit on the Board of HMRC, and all other revolving-door commercial accountants who influence HM Government, immediately retire from government and court offices.

($34,700,000,000 as a percentage of $2,000,000,000,000 is 1.7%) - £2 trillion will repair all UK deficits and fully replenish our bank deposits for investment into jobs and new industries.  Otherwise we might well follow Greece and Spain, both wrecked by endemic tax-evasion, into 40% youth unemployment and despair for the future.

Best wishes

Noel

Noel Hodson, Oxford.

**********************

To Rt. Hon Andrew Smith MP

By email

6 December 2012.

Dear Andrew

As the UK media nit-picks through George Osborne’s bleak midwinter Autumn Statement, pinching pennies from widows, orphans, the unemployed and single mums – and a few pounds from long suffering Middle England – I am astonished that neither government nor media have mentioned the $21 trillion of untaxed money buried in tax havens. It has been widely reported.

My calculation and estimate of how much of it was siphoned from the UK economy is at least $2 trillion; or more than two years of the UK Budget. This is more than it would be based on a strict global percentage of population, because of the money-conduits via The City of London and the UK’s historic governance and substantial use of tax-havens.

Most of the tax-free $2 trillion could be repatriated to the UK through the simple act of HMRC raising back-duty-tax assessments on all the capital balances that can be located. “Owners” would quickly identify themselves to avoid confiscation of numbered and anonymous accounts. Tax payers are in law assumed to be guilty until they prove themselves innocent (they must explain their assets) and HMRC have the legal right to claw-back without time limit; and to charge compound interest and penalties. HMRC could at the same time cancel tax relief previously granted by the UK on fabricated invoices, management charges, royalties, fantastic interest charges, dummy dividends, warped transfer pricing etc. These laws, powers and rules already exist and are often applied by HMRC. Such assessments usually amount to the whole of the tax-evasion-capital-flight; in this case $2 trillion. The “owners” are lucky if they escape prison sentences for the existing crimes of false-accounting and fraudulent-conspiracy.

No new laws are required to be passed to recover the tax-haven assets. The process can start without delay.

Would you please raise a question in Parliament on the following lines:  

The OECD, Paris; Christian Aid; The Tax Justice Network; and others, claim there is $21 trillion hidden in tax-havens. More than $2 trillion may have been siphoned from UK businesses and transactions. As the UK is heavily in debt domestically and internationally and as The Chancellor is necessarily cutting budgets up to 2018, will HM Government arm HMRC with all the resources required to rapidly repatriate the UK’s part of the $21 trillion – which might amount to $2 trillion or more? This amount would clear the UK’s indebtedness, refill UK banks and create surplus funds to invest in UK sustainable jobs and modern industries.  $2 trillion will pay for 3.3 million $30,000 (£20K) jobs, for 20 years.  

If the UK lacks a tax-savvy leader for the repatriation, please say that I will do the job with a team of 500 Military Intelligence and Top HMRC Officers, for 2.5% commission on recovered funds. Below is part of the attached .pdf document from the Tax Justice Network citing the $21 trillion hidden in tax-havens.

We are all in this together and it is economic warfare. Let’s get on with it.

Yours sincerely

Noel Hodson, Oxford