Of course is sofisticated. For that kind of money you get all the sofistication in tax-dodging and asset-hiding that you can buy. Lesser mortals have to just make do with the unsofisticated option of paying and having all your money in easy reach of the gov if they need to seize it.
In the US, there is an important distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion. One is legal, one is not. I don’t know UK law, but I notice this article and several others talk about tax avoidance. Is that a crime in the UK?
Lets put it this way, if it is not a crime, it is kinda tacky to do it while you insist on all the millions that have to be cut because OMG we need to save money.
The myth of the victimized, over-taxed, virtuous, and morally superior [m]billionaire would be laughable were it not accepted as religious truth. Not by me though…
I agree. But “Father of PM Commits Crime” is so much more compelling than “Father of PM is Tacky.”
That depends on whether pigheads were involved.
The boundary is often unclear. As the article suggests, the margin between (legal but fairly scummy) overseas avoidance and (illegal) overseas evasion could be whether the business was, in reality, controlled from the UK. The implication here is that it was, and what was dressed as avoidance was actually evasion. A court case would be needed to decide definitively.
Somebody get these geniuses working on a perfectly form of speech obfuscation system to replace our soon-to-be illegal encryption technology
I love this answer. If only people who aren’t rich could say that and get away with it. “This car with the screwdriver in the ignition, Officer? How I acquired it is a family matter. I consider the matter closed. We need to look forward.”
I hope there is a lot more to come. We have council elections in a month, and the British do love to punish a hated government at those.
*Sophisticated?
I thinks we’re all missing an opportunity here.
We should be calling encryption “Digital Rights Management.” Which it is, of course. The only difference is who controls the rights to the encrypted data.
That way, powerful people who have declared jihad against encryption would be declaring jihad against DRM.
its real funny to me that old man camerons law firm is called Blairmore while his son runsa government which ought to be called the same thing
Did I read in either The Guardian or the BBC (yesterday’s link), this revelation comes at a particular bad time as Cameron was going to head a summit next month about this very issue? (I’m going to look for it and provide link.)
Looking at your quote, I seem to have obfuscated my own speech quite effectively 
Found the link about this dropping at a very inopportune time for Cameron:
“Mr Cameron faces pressure to secure progress at an international summit on tackling corruption, which he will chair in London in May, and where the use of offshore tax havens to escape scrutiny will be high on the agenda.”
[Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak prompts call for tax haven crackdown] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35962640)
Yeah, that jumped out at me too. When people of low to modest income are expected to assume the tax burden that these assholes are shirking it most certainly is not a “family matter”.
Found the link about this dropping at a very inopportune time for Cameron:
“Mr Cameron faces pressure to secure progress at an international summit on tackling corruption, which he will chair in London in May, and where the use of offshore tax havens to escape scrutiny will be high on the agenda.”
The issue of tax havens will become “politically untenable” to the Tory establishment and the Tories will split just like the Rs in the U.S. Maybe that’ll just mean distribution among Corbyn’s Labour, Liberals, and UKIP, but it amounts to the same thing.
