Panama Papers reveal the tax-avoidance strategies of David Cameron's father

boing
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Flares fired at Iceland PM protest

http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/35964692

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Apologies, you are right. English is not my first language and it is “sofisticado” in Spanish :slight_smile:

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Ah, that makes sense. I keep forgetting that some languages use the “f” instead of the odd “ph” within the Romance language group.

Don’t feel bad. There are a lot of people in this world who were raised with English as their first language, and they still can’t speak or write it.

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If you (already-weatthy-and/or-powerful person) don’t want your kids (the government of your country, the people of your country) to have any cookies (money, bonds, gold, stocks, et al), you don’t put the cookie jar in the kitchen (your own country); you move it somewhere you think they’ll never find it (offshore from your country).

Is that a good analogy?

And I used to think “Panama Papers” were something you bought at a head shop!

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The legal detail are doubtless different, but the naming in the UK is the same as in the US. The term ‘tax avoidance’ is paying less tax by legal means, and ‘tax evasion’ is paying less tax by illegal means.

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Thanks. I see the two confused all the time, and it’s not mere semantics. We can still criticize people who are on the right side of the law, but it’s a different argument.

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…especially when it’s clear that the only reason that their behaviour is technically legal is because they wrote the law.

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I saw that and it got me wondering. What is there to actually be done at this point in time? Suppose Cameron Sr. is found to have engaged in illegal activities. What can HMRC actually do about it? The man’s dead, so he’s not going to be facing criminal penalties. His estate could be sued for the amount owed, I suppose, but I imagine there isn’t any money that’s still controlled by that legal entity, even if the entity itself still exists – and it likely doesn’t. David Cameron certainly isn’t a viable target for prosecution; he’s a beneficiary of the crimes but it’s likely not possible to prove he was ever an accessory to them.

Really, the only ones who might be pursued by the tax authorities are any (shell) corporations that might have been used to move funds around. And since tax haven jurisdictions are what got us to this topic in the first place, they aren’t likely to be subject to easy prosecution or seizure of funds.

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“Boot the fucker* out of office. Vote for the Labour party. Get Jeremy Corbyn setup as the new Prime Minister of the UK.”
Whoopsie, did I say that outloud?

*The fucker in question being David Cameron.

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“What can HMRC actually do about it?”

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That was a different question, I was just answering your first question. I highly doubt HMRC can do anything about it, it seems to me what the Cameron family did and/or is likely still doing should be illegal but is not. So it’s up to the voters at this point, not the HMRC, to enact change.

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Iceland just did it. Yay!

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I hate the leader of our council too, so I’m stuck there. There’s always a communist to vote for round here though, so there’s that.

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Fire him from the other side of the Thames at the houses of parliament from a big cannon. Boom! Splat! Is little Billy Hague still kicking about? He’s got circus contacts, shouldn’t be a problem getting the necessary hardware.

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