Sir Alex Ferguson among hundreds ordered to pay back TWENTY times their investment in tax scheme

Tax dodgers, deserve all they get

send them to jail too

greed ,bites them on the ***

Excellent news.

Average individual "investment" = £282k.   Average payment required to HRMC = £5.64M.    Assuming the reported numbers can be believed.

Ferguson the "socialist" given a knighthood by Blair at the behest of Alastair Campbell says it all

Neither Blair or Campbell are socialists.hth.

Qoute from the article: Hundreds of celebrities claim they face bankruptcy after officials demanded repayments of up to 20 times the amount invested in a tax avoidance scheme.

One wants to know. Which auction house will be selling off their unrotten gains and treasures? Be grand time to, go bargain hunting for quality products.

Stuff Black Friday!

“P.S Ferguson” should have known better, mind you he is, imbed with the “Coolmore” tax avoidance racket!

why 20 x

Shurely Fergiescum should be stripped of his knighthood ?

What would the taxman do if they all emigrated?

I'd certainly consider it in their position.

Lester Piggott wasn't nearly this bad

So rich, thick footballers who can't even count their own wages let alone read the Financial Times face ruin, while the agents, bankers, lawyers and accountants who got them into this mess just move on to the next scheme and the next victims.

Welcome to 21st Century Britain, where the Establishment takes care of its own, much like every other century.

taxman would just take any assets houses etc surely, how people think paying 1 to 3% instead of 45,50% is moraly right leaves me dumfounded, the luvies are panicing that brexit might upset the gravey boat

there not that thick to realise that instead of paying 500 grand a year tax they,ve been paying less than their gardener no ones that thick

xmoneyx - The schemes leveraged the initial investments with loans from Banks e.g. Invest 50K ...Borrow £1m...Claim losses on the whole £1.05  against top slice of your income.


So, the tax reclaimed will have to be repaid + interest +penalties plus , as far I understand it, the film schemes generate taxable income in later years which will still be taxable.

(The schemes are really tax deferral schemes as opposed to tax saving schemes - i.e. claim a huge initial tax rebate (which you make "work" for you) , then gradually repay the tax advantage over a number of years as the scheme unwinds).

i,m sure that if its made clear the alternative is 5 yrs in the big house,they,ll soon remember they,ve got some money under the bed

1st time [img]http://images.onesite.com/community.betfair.com/user/cooperman/812b9cbb...

thx johnny

thanks johnny for the succinct and clear explanation

xmoneyx

Lester Piggott wasn't nearly this bad

Lester should never have gone to jail for that, he wasn't a danger to anybody on the street, a massive fine should have been his punishment. Although he did have a chance to come clean and repay the tax.....but the cheque he signed was on an undeclared bank account and then the taxman knew he still hadn't declared everything and took him to court.

And what about Ken Dodd, avoiding tax and hiding loads of money in his house, he didn't go to jail - although Ken Dodd acted in court.... and avoided prison.

Be interesting to see what happens to Sir Alex Ferguson......

Johnny The Guesser is right about the original investment only being @£50k with the provision of being guarantors for the extra £1m - the schemes sold in the film industry are created in the hope that the films they invest in are profitable so that in effect they never have to invest the £1m but receive a percentage of the profits which they they offset against the losses on which they have already had tax relief & refunds which they "use".

No sympathy from me & they deserve all what the tax authorities impose in terms of fines and penalties on top of repaying the amounts claimed

Why can't everyone pay tax like the ordinary working person or is that being naive or foolish?

I feel you answered the question yourself sparrow - they consider us 'ordinary', they feel different to us and this is why they must be punished just as we would. If your self employed and miss your tax return the tax man will fine you straight away. They must come down hard or else they will be seen as untouchable, its about time HMRC got their act together.

Glen Hoddle is named as well.
Does this mean he will be coming back as an earthworm ?

forget the billions the top guys dont pay for a minute and theres millions of pounds going into the hands of companies organising umberella companies,self employed etc for youraverage everyday worker, in an ideal world everyone would be on paye at 15% say and do away with the vultures creaming billions of the top

What about the billions the wealthy do pay ?

44% of Britons pay no tax at all.

The richest 1% pay 27% of all of the income tax collected,

meaning 300,000 people pay a quarter of the nations income tax.

No matter what the rest of us may think they probably feel that they more than pay their "fair share".

The country would be pretty well stuffed without them.

As long as rich people pay their correct percentage of tax as others do then there is no problem. The fact is they are allowed to get away with evading their fair share.

well if firms and companies payed above the minimum wage there wouldnt make such large profits and so would have less tax to pay company and personal,3 of the countrys biggest money spinners football,sport in general,retail and services restraunts all helped in their profits by millions of people working for the minimum wage or in le roux and ashleys case less than the minimum wage with no  chance of employees going up the ladder,how can clubs like arsenal,chelski,utd earning millllions justify paying 1000,s of staff the same rate as staff at hartlepool,barnet etc,same as dodge taxing barlow and take that paying minimum wage to stewards,caterers etc at their gigs,le roux getting loons to part with 500 quid to a grand for a meal and paying his staff less than the local greasy spoon

Where does the 44% come from ? All adults in control of their own spending pay some tax. VAT,Excise Duty etc.

Exposed: the hundreds of City millionaires in film tax loophole

Wealthy traders and bosses joined football stars in scheme shut down by the taxman

   by  Lucy Tobin, Jim Armitage
   
    Tuesday 24 April 2012
 

The Independent Online

Hundreds of highly paid City bankers and chief executives make up the vast majority of members of a tax avoidance scheme at the centre of a crackdown by the Revenue.

Coverage of Eclipse 35, which was ruled against in a tax tribunal this week, has focused on Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, former England boss Sven Goran Eriksson and Nobby Solano, the ex-Newcastle United player.

But it is the vast swathe of City traders, hedge fund managers and private equity advisers which stand out, giving a rare insight into how the financial world's richest players shield their assets from the taxman.

Of the nearly 300 names in the list of members, of those whose identities are traceable, there were 11 managers at Deutsche Bank, 10 former and current[b] Goldman Sachs bankers, eight traders and managers at UBS, and more than 25 hedge fund managers from big firms including Brevan Howard and Walker Crips.
Other banks whose staff feature repeatedly include Citibank, Barclays Capital, the broker Icap, JP Morgan and RBS.

Most of the City whizzkids involved appear to be traders or heads of departments likely to be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, such as Stefan Tsonev, a managing director at JP Morgan, Magid Shenouda at Goldman Sachs, and Raymond Key of Deutsche. None was willing or available for comment.

Also appearing is Philippa Rose, sometimes claimed to be the most powerful headhunter in the City. She declined to comment on her investment in the scheme.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as many of the members of Eclipse 35 had common names that made their identification impossible.

Accountancy experts said dozens of similar schemes were in operation.

The murkiness of this particular scheme was highlighted this week, when HMRC barred Eclipse 35 from claiming tax relief on a £1bn tie-up with Disney. The relief would have been worth £404,000 for each of the high-net worth individuals involved who invested on average £173,000.

A spokeswoman for UK Uncut said the revelations showed "big businesses and bankers are profiting from everyone else's economic woes by cutting their tax bills."

Elsewhere, the taxman is currently investigating another film partnership, Ingenious Film Partners 2 LLP, in which City bigwigs including Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw and Dick Olver, chairman of the defence giant BAE, were investors for at least four years.

The wealthy investors involved in Eclipse 35 come from particular pockets of the country – many stem from Manchester's business community – and particular sectors at banks, which Mr Marum said was down to word-of-mouth recommendations as well as the wealthy sharing financial advisers.

How eclipse 35 worked

Barclays lent £790m to the film partnership, and its 289 members then topped out the pot with £50m of their own funds.
Just over £500m of that cash was then paid to Disney for rights to its films Enchanted and Underdog.
The scheme paid out £293m to Barclays for a decade-worth of interest payments for its original loan, and licensed the rights to the films back to Disney, at a rate of return of £1.02bn for 20 years.
Eclipse was then claiming £117m in tax relief from the Revenue, due to its payout to Barclays. That would work out at an average £404,000 tax relief per investor, providing about £1m-worth of tax-free earnings.
But this week HMRC acted to block the tax relief before it was paid out.

seems easy, get people to pay their taxes in return for government cutting taxes,but when high earners who should by paying 45,50% are spending fortunes to creative accountants to get their tax bil down to 5% and less what chance have you got

I'll rephrase, 44% of working age adults pay no income tax at all.

So because some earn so little and others have no employment that excuses the very wealthy from paying their fair share?

Define "fair share" .....

Is a millionaire who pays say £1m tax a year somehow not paying his "fair share" because somebody somewhere thinks he is rich enough and should be paying £1.5m ?

I thought I had defined it earlier. By simply paying their percentage in the same way as ordinary working people. The government has set this at 45% of earnings above the tax free allowance.

44% don't pay because the wage is pure mince

Are they paying their fair share then ?

is there some sort of threshold where you stop paying then

No they obviously aren't paying their share johnny as these avoidance schemes illustrate.

even PM confused


Ted Charlton‏ @ted_charlton
Teresa May at says she is coming after all Financial Advisers who help clients "Avoid paying Taxes" should she have said "Evade paying Tax

It isn't quite as simple as that Sparrow. Tax legislation is a few feet thick.

What avoidance  schemes are OK and what aren't ? - Most people organise their affairs in such a way to maximise their income.

Why is it considered part of the game for some members of society but a hideous crime by others?

There will be far more people cheating the system at lower income levels than at the top end.

300,000 people pay 25% of the nation's income tax.

Are those guys paying their fair share ?

I would guess that 99.9% of people who are self employed pay less than what they should pay. Every accountant is creative when it comes to submitting a self employer persons books, with every invoice and receipt possible submitted that has nothing to do with their business expenses!!

If I could get away with paying less tax legally I certainly would.

My point is merely a simple one in that everyone should pay tax as I did before I retired. As a bus driver I paid tax on all earnings above the tax free allowance. There are no tax avoidance schemes for the vast majority of working people and nor should there be for anyone in this country.

Did you pay into a pension sparrow ?

HMRC approved these schemes in the first place!

HMRC approved these schemes in the first place!

More than twice - lol

Tax legislation allowed film scheme investments.

There is tax relief on pension schemes which you join and contribute to (within limits) but you do pay tax on the pension you receive - they are not tax avoidance schemes as you infer

Of course they are tax avoidance schemes. That is exactly what they are !

Just one that is deemed morally acceptable.

Why should some other schemes , allowed by legislation, be deemed morally unacceptable?

Tax avoidance (evasion) is illegal ie; the film schemes which did not receive prior approval because they were created as a means to fraudulently avoid tax

Schemes approved & authorised by HMRC are not illegal (company pension schemes)

I'm not defending this particular scheme.

Film scheme investments were given extra tax breaks by the government to generate investment.

HMRC write legislation. Like any law , who is to say what it really means until it is tested in the courts. Only then can you say what is avoidance or evasion. There will always be borderline cases, as with any law.

These schemes were approved and authorised by HMRC
so accountants advised their clients accordingly

Tax "avoidance" is not illegal.  Tax "evasion" is.

What about the guy who earns £150K a year and dumps £140K into a pension and pays no tax ?

Is that OK ?

Yes but accountancy principles and avoidance schemes are pushing the boundaries of the law to its limits - sometimes they succeed other times they don't - but many times they are outside of the morality of what legislation intended them to be

You cannot put so much into a pension scheme because there are percentage limits - (a lot less than 90%+ of your salary) to what you can invest into any scheme in any year

Who is the judge of the morality of the law ?

Yes, there are limits geordie, but that is certainly possible. Is that guy immoral because he should be paying his fair share ?

mini me - in the past avoidance schemes were set up without prior approval & were subsequently challenged by HmRC on appeal

now the scheme organiser is supposed to request prior approval from HMRC to test their legitimacy before they are set up

the judge of the law is usually public opinion

Public opinion sets the law ?? How does that work then ?

What part does the actual legislation play or the courts ?

parliament sets out the legislation and enacts it but if they want to voted back they should listen to the electorate because if they shout that there is an inherent unfairness in a system where a millionaire pays nothing but someone on the average wage of say £26K pays £4 to £5K then they might find themselves out of work

A while ago now, but the law is the same, even here.

“Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.” Judge Learned Hand.

Providing they comply with the tax laws we have - the film schemes palpably failed that test so the contributors to the said schemes are required to pay back the benefits claimed together with interest & penalties because they were cheating the system

What about tax laws that are unclear , open to interpretation, or maybe just badly drafted ?

Is it OK to test or take 'advantage' of  these ?

What about the multi-millionaire who has no income and therefore pays no income tax ? Is that OK on your moral compass?

Yes I do receive a public sector pension. I paid into the scheme for 34 years paying tax at 10% then and now receive £140 a week which is now taxable at the appropriate rate. As a result my state pension is reduced for being in the scheme. So much for the so called "gold plated public sector" schemes. How anyone can compare this to the tax avoidance schemes enjoyed by the very rich is beyond me.

How can one legal tax avoidance scheme be socially acceptable, and encouraged  but others deemed so immoral ?

How about the millionaire who runs his business through a company (drawing little out) and paying just 20% corporation tax ? Is that OK ?

What about the tradesman who 'employs' his wife as his bookkeeper ? Is that OK ?

Or the employee who makes sure they work exactly 16 hours a week to maximise tax credits ? Is that OK ?

Where exactly do you draw the line ?

Sparrow if you contributed into that scheme for 34 years .... it would appear very poor value.

Did you have the option of a tax free lump sum, this may have reduced your current tax bill

I would like to thank the 300,000

with the new rules coming in,universal credit etc the cleaner at philip greens office at the moment would be paying an effective tax rate of about 95% on any extra hrs worked,even with the new rules on universal credit they will be paying 67% tax rate,so whilst the billionaire green steels from his employers pensions and pays clever accountants to pay 5% tax his cleaner is paying an effective 67% tax rate if he/she attempts to better themselves,madness but he has got 3 super cruisers to maintain

I think it is reasonable that HMRC are getting tough on people who only pay small amounts of tax in relation to their income. There is a swing of the pendulum going on here, for years these people have been getting away with it very nicely,
well life has a habit of kicking EVERYONE in the teeth now and again