Tim Worstall

Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) Capitol Hill Dear Sen. Casey and Sen. Schumer: Irked that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship, you propose, with your “Ex-Patriot Act,” to punitively tax and to permanently bar from ever again entering America men and women who, to reduce their tax liabilities, renounce [...]

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Two thousand senior civil servants could be minimising their tax by being paid off the Government payroll, it has emerged. That people who are not really eligible for not PAYE are getting paid through not PAYE is indeed pretty dodgy. However, this of course is bollocks: Being paid through a service company allows the recipient [...]

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The increase in higher-rate taxpayers is due to reductions in the threshold for paying 40pc tax, in combination with so-called “fiscal drag”, where tax bands do not move up in line with inflation, meaning inflation-linked wage increases push more people into higher rate tax bands. Fiscal drag is more subtle than just not moving the [...]

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The London arm of the great vampire squid paid only £4.1m in corporation tax to the Treasury last year. Despite pocketing £1.9bn in pre-tax profits. Lord Blankfein’s investment bank received a tax bill of £422.3m for 2011 but has put off paying 99pc of it until next year. Umm, isn’t corporation tax always paid in [...]

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International sales accounted for 64pc of the $39.2bn of revenue that Apple generated in the quarter, with chief executive Tim Cook describing the demand in China as “mind boggling”. If all of the kit is made in China and 64% of it is sold outside the US, why should the US Govt get a cut [...]

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1) The Diamond and Saez paper does not tell us what the revenue-maximizing tax rate is. It gives us a formula which (subject to their assumptions) allows us to calculate such a rate (the marginal rate on high earners), if we know the elasticity of taxable income and a parameter describing the shape of the [...]

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Now there’s a surprise, eh? David Cameron’s father built up legal offshore funds in Panama and Geneva Blimey. That anyone and everyone resident in the UK would have to pay tax on what they received from the funds is noted. In which case, what’s the damn problem? Peeps in UK pay UK tax. Hurrah!

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David Gauke, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, supported the CBI’s argument: “Those who have technical knowledge of tax say that allegations [of sweetheart deals] are clearly nonsense, and those that don’t have a close understanding tend to agree with whatever the wildest allegation is.”

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And Aaronson’s suggestion is a rule so narrowly drawn that it will legitimise most of what the public recognises as avoidance. Wack Wack, Buzz Buzz. “Legitimise”. Make legal. Tax avoidance is, already by definition, legal twatface. Graham Black is president of the Association of Revenue and Customs, part of the senior civil servants union, the [...]

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Have a look here. It’s entirely possible that I’ve missed something….in which case let me know…..but what they’ve actually said about these figures makes no damn sense at all. This is worse than the guff we get from the retired accountant from Wandsworth. Worse even that nef. No, really, it’s garbage.

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The extent of tax avoidance by Britain’s super-rich has been revealed with the release of Treasury figures showing that almost a thousand UK taxpayers earning more than £1m a year have a tax rate of less than 30% of their income. I’ve been poking around trying to find the release of those figures. Can’t see [...]

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But it is possible to overwhelm people with information you know: Mr Diamond, an American citizen, is entitled to compensation from his employer if he is charged tax twice – as he was last year by Britain and New York State. The scale of last year’s tax equalisation payment caught some investors by surprise, even [...]

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Treasury officials argued the revelation underlined the need for action to prevent the super-rich exploiting loopholes to reduce their tax bill below that of low-paid workers. The figures, released by the Government, show 6 per cent of £10 million-plus earners pay less than 10 per cent in tax and another three per cent pay below [...]

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This includes the shoppers at Topshop, owned by Philip Green. Does he own it? Green avoids paying huge sums of tax in Britain by registering his company in the name of his Monaco-based wife, Tina. Oh, no, he doesn’t own it. So he’s not avoiding any tax then, is he?

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For they increase human happiness by allowing tax avoidance!

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Yeah, sure, partisan and biased but: Americans paid federal incomes taxes of $945 billion. Sounds like enough to run a government on if I am to be honest really. You know, a trillion dollars does actually manage to buy an awful lot of what citizens would actually like from a government. Perhaps not as much [...]

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We should know what tax is paid on profits from our purchases at Amazon, Boots or Philip Green’s Top Shop. We do. There’s a line in their published accounts that says “tax paid”. Last time I looked at the Top Shop ones it was 30% or so of profits. Bang on the statutory rate. This [...]

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The report found that Britain’s 20 biggest tax avoiders have used three main loopholes to legally reduce their their income tax bills by a total of £145 million in a year. Two thirds of them wrote off business losses in one of their companies against their income tax bill, reducing it by as much as [...]

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He’s only been doing what a noted tax expert suggested people should do after all.

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So, there’s an LLP floating around. Never done anything, never traded. But they want a tax return. For a dormant LLP. Humph, OK. Then they insist that I buy commercial software in order to file the form? What?

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