BANKER BASHING & BIG-BANGS

copyright Steve Bell

Big-Bang theories of the universe are being questioned, and this futurology blog should be focusing on these fuzzy physics fundamentals. BUT, this week’s LIBOR rate frauds in The City and Wall Street are such exemplars of what socio-economic fixes are needed before mankind can move on – into the new era of intelligent co-operation - that they must not be ignored.

The bad banks have been again caught fiddling the global bookkeeping. They are also the main conduits for advising on and siphoning capital to tax-havens and thus bankrupting nations like Greece and Ireland – and forcing unnecessary austerity on most OECD countries. They are sabotaging the real-economy, stealing our jobs and wrecking our children’s futures to increase their ill-gotten gains.

Apologist politicians and other parasites tell us that the banks’ offences require new laws to prosecute them. Not true! In the UK the False Accounting laws in the Theft Act and the Fraudulent Conspiracy laws will do the job. Similar laws exist in the USA.

In addition to fines and prison; can we please have our money back? Most bankers’ bonuses for the past 30 years have been paid under false pretences. Alzheimer’s-Free observers might recall that The City lost about £1.2 trillion in 2008/09 and Wall Street lost many trillions – wiping out all the supposed gains of the previous decades on which their (tax-haven) pay and bonuses were based. This a big sum of money that will make a significant difference to OECD nations’ economies. They fiddled those “rewards” they must now Pay them Back!

Laws:

http://legal.practitioner.com/regulation/standards_9_3_23.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud#United_States

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sentencing_manual/fraud/index.html

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/contents

TIMID, MUTE & MURDEROUS

Bankers are being fined and castigated for persistently rigging “The Global Free Markets” for their own gains – in London and New York. They are fiddling our global bookkeeping system. These same bankers are “earning” $1M to $20M a year each from money-economy organisations that are as vital as food, water, medicines and commodities to civilisation, to all of us. Their gains are paid by all of us, by the patient, uncomplaining working population.  Their gains are our losses. Why do we not get angry and take action?

Like “Mike of Suffolk” in yesterday’s 17 year tale of Loan-Sharking, the majority of humans are extremely timid. They live in a constant state of bewildered fear, dread and inaction. All they seek is a warm bed and a painless death. Generations of physical punishments have taught them to comply, to remain silent, to keep their heads below the parapet. If Mike’s tapeworm Loan-Shark had called at my door weekly, demanding money with menaces (see below); after I had paid a reasonable amount back, after 3 months, my sense of fairness and self-respect would assert itself and I would have opened my door wielding an axe or hammer in an Irish state of terrible rage.  One way or another that would have resolved the problem. Justice would be done. Attack is often the best form of defence. Violence is exclusively a tool of the State – only if the State uses it for social justice in a timely manner. Where are our money-police? What have they been doing for thirty years?

“The Global Off-Shore Tax-Free Free Markets” have been sucking the blood from the world’s real-economy, the workforce, for 30 years. Everything we need for life has been “monetised” and transferred off-shore, overseas, abroad, away from sane community control. The money-economy is infested with insatiable gluttons and gamblers. The gluttons are eating the planet. The gamblers are mentally-ill addicted people who have wormed their way into our banks to gamble with our money – not their own. They will bet on anything. They make bets via computers millisecond by millisecond. They are insane. We have promoted them to run our financial systems, to gouge out vast personal fortunes, to pay no tax and to bankrupt nations. They will “bet the house” – but it is our homes and lives they play with. It is time they were incarcerated in the madhouse – with a roulette wheel for comfort.

When are we going to get angry? When do we say “no”? What the hell are the highly paid watchdogs doing? When will we repatriate the trillions hidden off-shore? When will we roll out the guillotines into every town square in the world? The civilised, sane answer is global integration and nationalisation of all financial systems.

EARN 2018% ON YOUR SAVINGS

BRITISH JUSTICE:  20 years old “Mike” in Suffolk UK borrowed £250. In the next 17 years he paid back £90,000 (2018% interest a year), losing his house, job and his health. Mike sought help only when the loan-shark threatened his wife and children. The loan-shark was imprisoned for 8 months (4 months) for being unlicensed. If he had applied, he would be entitled to suck the lifeblood from his victims at twice the rate. Legalised WONGA can charge up to 4,000%. Four months jail isn’t much to suffer for £90,000 and blighting a family’s life for 17 years.

                                                        (Jill Insley, Guardian 27 June 12, “Loan shark’s victim wins award”)

For Heavens Sake! – Sign the 5% CAP petition and eliminate these evil “financial services” FSA authorised tapeworms.  5% is ten-times the UK Base Rate. Making 10 times is enough for any lender.

Sign: http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/

		Mike of Suffolk - Loan & Debt	repaid
Years	Interest	£                                        250
1	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
2	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
3	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
4	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
5	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
6	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
7	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
8	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
9	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
10	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
11	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
12	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
13	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
14	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
15	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
16	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
17	2017.6%	£                                        250	£ 5,294
			£        2
		Total Repaid	£90,000

$2,000,000,000,000 (Two Trillion Dollars)

$2,000,000,000,000 (Two Trillion Dollars) for Britain - The ever vigilant Mrs Trellis of North Wales challenges my tax-accountancy views pitched against the combined weight of counter opinions from the western world’s massed media; a cast of thousands who all mugged-up last week on international tax-law and became overnight top legal-eagles, unanimously and continually asserting that the mind bogglingly complex tax avoidance schemes they report are “…of course all strictly legal”. 

Mrs Trellis writes “These lovely presenters would not ever, ever, ever mislead us. I can’t believe they are all tax evaders who have a, now terrified, vested interest in proving that evasion is avoidance and so legal, that black is white and vice-versa; and that two and two make five or three or whatever number you like – proving it merely by constant repetition. If they didn’t understand the legal intricacies of these schemes, such trusted public figures would not give any opinion.”

So, to reassure Mrs Trellis (with apologies to: I'm sorry I haven't a clue - BBC Radio 4) here is my relevant CV back to 1960.

Also, the gentle lady asks; "Anyway - just how much could a Crack-Tax-Recovery-Unit get back?" Well – the OECD calculated in 2008 there is about $18 trillion off-shore, which mostly originated from the OECD economies over the past 30 years.  The UK invented tax-shelters (for our struggling Aristocrats - God Bless You Kind Sirs) and are disproportionately weighted in contributing to The Global Rivers of Tax-Free Cash. Of the $18 trillion ($18 thousand billion) out there, the UK’s share is not less than $2 trillion – or 3 years entire UK fiscal budget – ripe for repatriation; as is Greece's, Spain's, Italy's and America’s siphoned off, tax-free share of the loot.  It will repay all national deficits.

$250K PA - TV SEEKS JOURNALISTS WITH 50 YEARS TAX-LAWYER EXPERIENCE.

Kindly Tax-Journalist-Lawyer
refunds wicked taxes to the poor.

Long ago I was founding partner of a firm of tax-accountants and follow the tax avoidance stories with professional insight (Top Tory donor linked to Jimmy Carr tax scheme – Guardian 23 Jun 12). We struggled to hire skilled tax-planners, so I’m astonished that every presenter, commentator, pundit, diarist, columnist and journalist in Britain, without exception, has sufficient subtle tax-law knowledge to unequivocally add to every report that “…It is of course strictly legal.” Are they all covert tax-experts? Or are they themselves “at it” – all of them? Or are guilty editors force feeding them a mandatory line?

For the record: e.g. If the BBC’s John-It-Is-Strictly-Legal-Humphrys, London, UK earns a £100,000 fee from Granada TV, UK – a simple transaction with one-invoice – which is then subsequently complicated with cross invoices via tax-havens etc; those inserted steps are ignored for tax purposes. And creating such fake paperwork is “false accounting” carrying dire penalties and tax clawback. Ask Al Capone, ask Lester Piggot, ask UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

M' LEARNED FRIEND - TAX COUNSEL

Methinks thou doth protest too much!

So many radio, TV, magazine and newspaper journalists, presenters and commentators are so certain that the incredibly complex tax-avoidance or tax-evasion schemes recently found to be used by such a large majority of top people to pay 1% instead of 50% tax, are utterly legal - in fact so very, very legal - really, really, really legal - as to be a positive force for good for society and mankind; that I have to set aside my 40 years tax-accountancy experience and bow to the journalists' erudite legal opinions. Faced with such a tsunami of absolute certainty - what can one say? What can one assume, other than they must all be right? This is democratic power at its best. Decades of legal precedent swept aside in this newscasters' Tax-Free Spring. I am contrite. I was erroneously ready to assume the tax-dodgers had made it all up, had fiddled the books, were guilty of false accounting. Mea Culpa.

TAX SCAMS ARE LEGAL! OR ARE THEY?

22 JUN 12.

Dear Simon Jenkins – TAX SCAMS ARE LEGAL – you say in the Guardian today.

Oh no they’re not! Oh yes they are!

In tax law in all jurisdictions, inserting a false-step into a chain of transactions nullifies the whole chain. E.G. Jimmy Carr (JC) wins a contract from The London Palladium for £100,000 plus 20% VAT, £120,000. The theatre claims it as a valid tax deduction, rightly getting say, £25,000 knocked off their corporation tax. JC persuades the theatre to switch the contract to Funny-Money-Productions-Jersey-Inc (FMPJI) which is not a real, properly staffed, experienced agency hunting for stage business for JC but is self-evidently a tax-haven brass plate, advertising such “staging-post” services for a nominal fee to thousands of UK tax-payers.

The contract with the London Palladium (and JC’s other contracts) are clearly prior won and owned by JC who assigns them to Jersey – this is obviously an inserted non-commercial step to evade tax. FMPJI does not charge VAT so the theatre’s immediate cash flow is easier and as “everybody is doing it” they go along with the scam. To be valid in law – JC must have a “wholly commercial” agency contract with FMPJI at “arms-length” – FMPJI must have real 3^rd party control over the £100,000 – out of JC’s control, otherwise he will be deemed to be “a director by whatever name called” of FMPJI, which would make his life very complex.

The “loan” JC gets from FMPJI must be on wholly commercial terms, be repayable and charged for – otherwise it is another obvious inserted step to evade tax. HMRC has for 100 years assessed whether money coming from overseas to JCs, is INCOME or CAPITAL or LOAN and taxed it accordingly. The loan is clearly (clear to any judge or jury and the ordinary man on the Clapham omnibus) not a normal commercial loan. It is doubtful whether JC would ever let go of real ownership of the £100,000 to Jersey agents who now purport to lend it back to him – unsecured and non-repayable.

The whole scheme is false-accounting; made-up; a fiction; untrue; and carries a potential prison sentence. If questioned in court, JC will either admit to these false steps being inserted or perjure himself and risk a long prison sentence – like Al Capone. As a tax-barrister said to one of our clients being cocksure about such arrangements “You won’t be so cheerful when you are gripping the bar at the Old Bailey”. 

These many “scams” or “complex avoidance schemes” are “contracts illegal as formed”. As JC’s fairy tales unwind, he gets taxed, plus interest and penalties (HMRC rarely bang people up, but remember Lester Piggot.); the invoice from Jersey to the London Palladium fails and the theatre loses its tax-relief on £100,000. Then the VAT men call. Will JC sue his advisers?

The huge question and big story is “Why are ALL UK newscasters, including your good-self, being told to say ‘It is of course completely legal tax avoidance’”, an utterance they make with such assured confidence that they must have studied and practised international tax-law for at least 40 years each. And WHY does the government insist that new anti-avoidance laws have to be forged to stop these schemes, when the necessary laws have existed for a century? All that’s needed to press cases is an honest judge - who is not evading tax.

My professional guess is that tens of thousands of top people have fallen for the glib offshore salesmen (the schemes ARE legal in Jersey and Cayman etc) and have joined such dodgy schemes over the past 30 years (since Thatcher).  Somebody must have bunged the $18 trillion washing around off-shore that the OECD regularly report.  The tax-haven “Rivers of Cash” more than match the “Mountains of Debt” beloved by offshore currency speculators in “The Free Markets”.

The merry habitual tax-dodgers are just waking up to the fact that if their schemes are illegal false-accounting carrying prison sentences (which they almost certainly are) then HMRC will reopen their personal assessments back 30 years and win the back duty tax + compound interest + penalties as HMRC always have done. The evaded VAT elements make for more costs and penalties. The artful dodgers may avoid or evade prison terms.

The great news for your audience – the hoi-polloi, the great unwashed, the little people who pay taxes and are suffering pay reductions to below a living wage – is that the many billions HMRC can thus repatriate to and for the UK will clear all UK deficits, bank black holes and need for austerity. The boost to our economy will be unprecedented. Hurrah! I hear you shout. If I were Cameron & Clegg, I would form a special 500 strong task-force from the intelligence and security services, authorised to use the existing international tax-law presumption of “guilty until proven innocent” to collect the back-duty money in 2 years – and pay them a bonus on all collections banked.  

Go to it Mr Jenkins and all other honest journalists. Make it so!

Noel Hodson

PS please sign our 5% CAP petition (link below).

Sign our petition to Cap loan-sharking:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/5_per_annum_cap_on_all_interest_rates_charges/

Follow our blog http://noelhodson.blogspot.co.uk/



STRICTLY LEGAL AT THE BBC

Tax avoidance and evasion is on the UK’s political menu this week as Prime Minister David Cameron and his acolytes find “aggressive tax-avoidance” unsporting and unfair. Dutifully, BBC radio and TV news and the other channels reveal that a famous, high earning comedian purports to be employed by a tax-haven Jersey company which bills his clients then lends him money in London (thus loans not income) tax-free, saving “many millions”. The comedian is one among many. “They” are all doing it – like the Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Russians and Americans.  

Strangely ALL the UK newscasters immediately assure their audiences “…Of course, it is strictly legal.”  I was for many years a tax-accountant and can assure you that such plans are “of course, strictly illegal” and have been since 1910. These funny-money, fast foot shuffles, diverting contracts and pretending offshore companies exist are shams which have long been outlawed under false accounting laws.

The basic rules in all tax regions are (1) The transactions must be “real”, at “arms-length” (not circular from you-to-you), and at normal commercial prices. (2) They must be “necessary” for the business – or lose the tax-relief. (3) The offshore company must be real – not a brass plate sham – and be managed by offshore residents (not by you back in London). (4) The “loans” must be real, at commercial rates – otherwise are treated as income for tax. The judge of these conditions is “the common man on a Clapham omnibus” – an ordinary Jack or Jill who on hearing the story is wholly convinced the scenario is real and the taxpayer should pay no taxes.

So why; I hear you cry, in the face of such obvious illegality, sham, deception and false accounting, do the great and good of Britain panic forwards to assure all us compliant full-rate tax-payers that “of course it strictly legal”? Such fanciful Alice in Wonderland tales have so far only been believed by the saintly Dave Hartnett, outgoing head of HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) who sees nothing but good and truth in taxpayers, where cynics see lies and greed.  

Could the reason for the newscasters amazing solidarity be that they are all fully qualified and experienced tax lawyers who have studied the details of all schemes and found them to be indubitably beyond reproach? Or – Heaven forfend! The unthinkable! Are they themselves at it? Or are the news editors who feed them the scripts and auto-prompts, at it? Do they fear the knock on the door at midnight or, as one tax-barrister warned a cocksure client – “You won’t be so cheerful when you are gripping the bar at the Old Bailey”.  Perhaps Jeremy-It-is-All-Strictly-Legal-Paxman, and Martha-It-is-All-Strictly-Legal-Carney, and John-It-is-All-Strictly-Legal-Snow – and not forgetting David-It-is-not-very-Nice-But-is-Strictly-Legal-Cameron and George-I’ll-slap-them-on-the-back-of-the-legs-with-a-wet-flannel-But-it-is-strictly-legal-Osborne and most other UK politicians, Lords, Ladies and gentlemen. Are they all offshore in dodgy arrangements – causing the UK deficits?

DEATH & FEAR & PRAYER

 

I phoned a friend who I’ve known for 65 years. He is almost as old as me – and very ill. He lives alone a few hundred miles away and today has so little strength that he only got to the phone by falling off his chair and crossing the room on hands and knees. He sat on the floor to talk with me – wondering if he could clamber back to his chair. He will phone an ambulance if needed. He greatly fears death; a terror that may be keeping him fearfully alive when all energy, belief and hope has drained away.

I know that he has secretly lived in great fear all his life since early childhood. But most of his friends would not know that. They know him as a brilliant, cynical, prickly, internationally successful, alarming heavyweight street fighter. A man you regret getting into an intellectual argument with – and a stranger you, unnecessarily in his case, cross the road to avoid on a dark night.

And now he fears death – oblivion, the end of everything.

Do I fear death? I am older, no wiser and maybe nearer the exit than my tired, sad friend. Like him, I am a lapsed, recovering Catholic, with no religious faith left. Unlike him I tend to J N Barrie’s brave insight “Death must be an awfully big adventure.” My lesser IQ and my perhaps flawed logic allow me to claim, unlike him, that the universe and life are not purposeless and meaningless. I have an older brother who died recently - which was polite of him, to keep an orderly queue by age – shortly after a near-death experience “more real than life” that removed his fear of dying. My inner personal reassurance rests on a multitude of experiences, some “meetings with remarkable men” (and women), and a little scientific learning; which informs me that our essence, our light, is perpetual and as eternal as is the universe – until the end of days.

My friend is too exhausted and too preoccupied to ponder any theories of life. He is almost completely closed off. Others may find some insight or inspiration:

www.noelhodson.com/index_files/Life-Universe-Everything-8Mar2011.pdf

But however much I respect his rigorous, cynical, clever but now blinkered mind – I fervently wish he could replace his fear with tremendous wonder and die in the perhaps hallucinatory comfort of the ephemeral arms of his once all-caring Catholic guardian angel.  I privately weep for him. Is this a prayer?

YOU ARE UNIQUELY BRILLIANT

YOU REALLY CAN DO ANYTHING: Aged 16 with just 4 school “O” levels - which are my only certificates, apart from those for swimming two lengths of a pool, and for lighting a fire with one match - I went to work and went with the flow. With no other formal qualifications – and even those meagre four O levels were beaten into me by strong armed Irish Christian Brothers – with no high school, no further education, no university, no apprenticeships, and belonging to no professional bodies, I have nevertheless in 53 work-years - professionally:

1) Drawn and calculated steel structures for bridges and high rise buildings, which I trust are still safe after 53 years.

2) Written the first single-entry accountancy software (in COBOL).

3) Been senior partner of a 40 person tax, audit and accountancy firm.

4) Launched one of the first telework-networked businesses – 38 offices linked by fax machines, helping thousands of new-start businesses.

BUSINESS EXPANSION SPECIALISTS http://www.noelhodson.com/SW2000/Take-the-Plunge-Home.pdf

5) Managed a car making engineering works – making fabulous Bentley based Mallalieu sports cars.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zyaZgaZ3yE

6) Helped to change the world of work by promoting and consulting on telework worldwide.

7) Written papers on Economics, textbooks and unputtabledownable novels. 

8) Become a Futurologist; …whatever that is.  Oh… and probably solved all the remaining mysteries of the universe.

You do not have to be “good at school”. We all are blessed with unique intelligence that many do not look for. Follow your own preferred talents.

Would you rather eat a meal cooked by self-taught Raymond Blanc, one of the world’s greatest chefs, or by a dusty old lecturer? Could Einstein have outsmarted untutored Wayne Rooney on a football field?  Could Wayne Rooney have conceived E=MC²? There are as many different, fabulous, unique talents as there are people.

Experiment to find your talent and DO IT.