VANILLA TAX-AVOIDANCE - LET THEM EAT CAKE

Lin Homer, the HMRC chief executive (in the blue jacket),
and colleagues face ‘angry questioning from MPs
who accused her department of failing to serve
taxpayers’ interests’. Photograph: PA

Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC office, opens criminal inquiry - 18 FEB 15.

UK, HMRC should prosecute HSBC  23 FEB 2015.

Who in the UK is stopping prosecution?

HSBC’s Swiss arm is potentially open to a range of criminal charges in Britain because there is “credible evidence” that it has had a role in enabling tax evasion, according to a former director of public prosecutions.

In a legal opinion prepared for the consumer watchdog, SumOfUs, Lord Ken Macdonald QC argues that there is sufficient evidence for the bank to be investigated for conspiracy to defraud the UK tax authorities.

Decisions taken by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) not to prosecute the bank were “seriously legally flawed”, he said.

Macdonald also said he believed that evidence already publicly available suggested HSBC should be prosecuted under the 1977 Criminal Law Act for its part in a “systemic” operation to deprive HMRC of revenue.

13 FEB 2015: Britain's tax-collectors - the criminal's cosy friend. The UK media has enjoyed a week's frenzied festival of tax-criminal revelations from HSBC Bank, Zurich, Private Clients. 

Prem Sikka efficiently sums up the thousands of words, pictures and City PR apologists in his article today, Friday 13th February. Do read it to learn how wealthy Brits float above all laws to sabotage their nation's economy. "Only little people pay tax - Darling".

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/12/hsbc-pathetic-dealing-tax-dodgers-evaders-barely-punished

France says it did not restrict UK from using HSBC files to pursue bank and criminals -Tory minister and tax office boss told parliament failure to prosecute was due to restrictions imposed by French authorities .  2010 - UK told Swiss banks "We're Unlikely to prosecute UK Swiss tax-dodgers."

The Lagarde List of "industrial scale" tax-evaders, bent dictators, arms dealers, drug dealers, criminals and sociopaths - alongside, perhaps, a few bewildered honest folk - of 100,000 account holders at one of about 300 banks, in one of 70 global tax-havens, at HSBC Zurich, was copied in 2007 by a French whistle-blower (who the Swiss threaten with cruel and unusual punishments) and sent to Christine Lagarde, then French Finance Minister. Ms Lagarde sent it on to all governments. The list included 7,000 UK citizens and 2,059 Greeks. The British cash amounted to about £5 billion - 8 years ago. Britain's tax-collectors boast that they have recovered £137 million, which is a miserable 2.7%, and have brought one (Yes, a single one) back-tax case out of the 7,000.

Lin Homer, the sad looking lady in Thatcher-blue in the picture, denies knowledge of the list. My guess is that she is telling the truth. The poor lady has absolutely no knowledge or experience of taxation; which is probably why the Conservative Government appointed her, and so she would have to rely on advice from the second rank in HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs) who inherited the mantle of  the previous chief, Dave Sweetheart Deals Monte Carlo Hartnett, who forgave Vodafone £4 billion tax, before jumping ship to join Deloittes, Vodafone's tax-planners and auditors. TAX-HAVEN LONDON -v- 50% JOBLESS 




The British establishment's response to these shocking, damning, criminal revelations, hidden beneath the sacrosanct cloak of "taxpayer confidentiality" was wonderfully underscored by one of the, doubtlessly wholly innocent, Swiss account holders, Lord Fink, fundraiser for the Conservative Party - who first said he would sue Ed Miliband, Leader of The Labour Party, for defamation, for outing the wholly innocent Lord, then - after words with his lawyers - said he wouldn't sue and that he'd only indulged in Swiss tax avoidance (which is all perfectly legal) "at the vanilla end of the tax avoidance spectrum, which everybody does." Do we? Really? Lord Fink didn't say "Let them eat cake - at the food-bank"

Just wait till Lin Homer gets her tax-investigation-teeth into the case; to learn the truth of the matter. She will be like a rottweiler in a bunny farm, once she reads a book on tax-law. (Tip - read about self-invoicing). But then how long will it be before she finds the revolving door to riches beyond her wildest dreams. Could there even be an offshore romance between Lin and Dave?

In the meantime, which will be many years of obfuscation, Britain sticks by it's VIP tax-avoiders, tax-evaders and money-launderers who are responsible for £2 trillion tax-evasion-capital-flight (8 million good jobs). Other nations are beating the hell out of their tax dodgers (except of course Greece) and suing HSBC - but The City stands loyally by its friends. Perhaps the UK is keeping its powder dry to sneak up on and recover the maximum from the 130,000 British Virgin Island accounts, published in 2014 by ICIJ - or maybe not.

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

Email - 12 FEB 2015. CC to The Guardian, The BBC. 

Dear Lady Hodge and Lin Homer,

Lin Homer, HMRC and HSBC Zurich.

In tax investigations:

1    CAPITAL: In OECD law, the taxpayer is guilty until proved innocent. i.e. beneficial owners of offshore assets must demonstrate that each tax-haven deposit is fully tax-paid before it is deposited. Usually the deposits /assets transferred to tax-havens are not tax-paid. Usually the cash /assets are part of ENRON style “complex” corporate or individual self-invoicing, or “staging-post” or “back-to-back” transactions (simple false accounting) which have been claimed as tax deductions in the source country. It is the examination of all the deposits made and of the entire capital transferred that usually leads to the whole amount being clawed back by HMRC. E.g. An HSBC Zurich account with £1M balance – is charged 40% tax  (top rate) + compound interest since deposit, + 100% penalty; the taxable business /income in the UK from which the transferred amounts have been self-invoiced are adjusted to add back the false deductions. This usually amounts to more than the total £1M balance, plus the threat of jail for fraud. Lin Homer said HMRC cannot prosecute without more evidence than the leaked offshore bank account. The burden of proof is on the non-taxpayer, not on HMRC, which simply issues “protective assessments” for the entire amounts as above. Thus it is reasonable and normal to expect the whole of the capital (£5B ?) in the 7,000 Zurich accounts to be repatriated to the UK Treasury. The American IRS confiscate the whole amount first – and wait for the owner to reclaim it in law as fully tax paid. There are 70 other tax-havens and 300 other offshore banks; plenty to go at, estimated as £2 trillion of UK funds.

2    INCOME: What I imagine Lin Homer is referring to when claiming collection of £137M, is the tax on the undeclared interest earned in the offshore account; which is subject to the same calculations as the capital (40% tax + compound interest + penalty + jail) but which is usually a small part of the tax settlement.

      SWEETHEARTS: The extraordinarily soft sweetheart deals allegedly offered by senior UK officials to Switzerland and tax-evaders for, say, a mere 15% of the account balance, instead of 250% as above, are probably not legally binding on subsequent UK tax-investigation teams. These are deals with criminals and so are “contracts illegal as formed”.  

4    PLUMBERS: The greatest damage to the UK or source country economy is the loss of tax revenue, plus the tax-evasion-capital-flight. The “owner” does not need the money and freezes it offshore, depriving the UK of capital, jobs and economic activity. In contrast, a UK plumber or heart surgeon who takes undeclared cash which they spend in the UK is doing little damage to the national economy. But, when caught, will be subject to a back-duty case and will pay 250% of the tax evaded.

The significant and important repatriations would be more efficient without the Punch & Judy politics making a cheap joke of it. Specialist teams of tax-investigators should be recruited from the intelligence services – with access to GCHQ’s telecoms data – and paid an extra 2.5% of all amounts clawed back from offshore to HM Treasury – within a time limit.

MEDIA CONFUSION: Following government encouragement to make UK films, buy plant & machinery, build industrial units, invest in R&D, buy a tractor, buy a pension etc – and claim tax relief on the expenditure – is NOT tax avoidance; it is complying with government guidelines; usually called Tax Minimisation. (i.e. Spend a £1 as directed by government to save 40 pence - This is NOT tax avoidance).

Yours truly

Noel Hodson

Tax Reconciliations, Oxford.