What's the big deal with BN66?

[scooterscot]

How's about doing some proper research you tit?

I wonder if you'll be of the same opinion if you get a backdated IR35 demand.

So you used the scheme?

I'll not get a backdated IR35 demand because I'm a consultancy not a one-man band Rodney Trotter.

Even then HMRC are not going to backdate IR35 like BN66 because that's a whole new level of dodge which even the village idiot could understand was not right.


What get my feckles up is people like this who think it's right to deprive the rest of the country of revenue and expect the best from services. I'm paying as much tax now as I was a permie, if not more. But folks who go for those 98% take home nonsense should know better.

[AtW]

At least it's kept the "I'm looking at a scheme that lets me keep >90% of my income Pocketandrun.com - has anyone got anything good to say about it?" trolls quiet today.

Apparently it's a human right to pay 3.5% of tax when 40% is expected

[PAH]

Apparently it's a human right to pay 3.5% of tax when 40% is expected

It should be a right to be able to set out your stall based on the current rules. Just like those who choose to avoid 40% altogether by other legal methods.

The actual figures are irrelevant. If it was an illegal act it should have been clamped down on sooner. HMRC have used it as a honey trap by the way they've gone about it.

What other honey traps may they have lying around that we may fall into if we believe the current rules actually apply?

[northernladuk]

Well I for one have learnt a lot of very useful information while lurking the BN66 threads. Most importantly is that I can say tit without it coming up tulip.

Cooooooooooool!

[AtW]

What other honey traps may they have lying around that we may fall into if we believe the current rules actually apply?

If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.

If the argument was about 39% vs 40% then I'd be with you as it's hard for common sense to pick up a problem, but when most people pay 40% and some scheme offer 3.5% then anyone with more common sense than greed would have stayed away from it.

When I was permie in one company I worked for the management there offered all high taxpayers in the company a NI dodge based around salary paid quarterly, can't remember exact details but it was 100% legal - it smelt fishy so I stayed away out of it, partly because the management wanted 50% of saved money

[TheFaQQer]

Well I for one have learnt a lot of very useful information while lurking the BN66 threads. Most importantly is that I can say *** without it coming up tulip.

Cooooooooooool!

You can also say c**ish without it being changed, but that doesn't mean that you should.

[sweetandsour]

Got it in one.

I don't agree with the scheme. However I also disagree with what HMRC are trying to do.

That’s my position too. The scheme was wrong-headed. Stopping it and closing the loophole is right. Retrospective application of a new interpretation (or ‘clarification’, in New Liebore speak) is wrong, and is a very dangerous step.

Precisely my view.

The scheme might have been dodgy or even taking the p1$$, but it's up to HMG to make good tax law.
It's reasonable that a UK taxpayer can have reasonable certainty that they're behaving according to the prevailing law.
HMG inventing a time machine removes that certainty and is offensive to any sense of natural justice. It also sets a very dangerous precedent.

It should be a right to be able to set out your stall based on the current rules. Just like those who choose to avoid 40% altogether by other legal methods.

This is my view too. If the scheme broke the law why was it not challenged using the law?

If the government wish to close a loophole then that is OK with me. What is not OK is changing the law retrospectively and calling it clarification, regardless of whether that has happened before or not. Nobody can be certain of anything any more.

[AtW]

Nobody can be certain of anything any more.

You can be pretty certain if you pay income tax at levels that vast majority of honest tax payers do, but you can't and should not be certain you can get away with 3.5% tax vs 30-40% that was due by exploiting some "clever" completely artificial arrangement.

The whole point of doing that is creating a natural deterrent - fear: don't take chances pay tax that is due and sleep well.

The only other alternative (apart from simple flat rate tax system that has zero chance of being implemented in this country) is endless loophole closing effort that will never succeed because new loopholes get found.

The way I undestand it such approach is totally not British - rule of law and all that.

But what I also understand is that it is not British to take the piss and abuse the system that was largely designed to operate on "gentleman" like environment, basically based around general honest of all those involved. So the book gets thrown at those people and it may well be that it is the wrong book - tough tulip if those people deserve it.

[sweetandsour]

But what I also understand is that it is not British to take the piss and abuse the system that was largely designed to operate on "gentleman" like environment, basically based around general honest of all those involved. So the book gets thrown at those people and it may well be that it is the wrong book - tough tulip if those people deserve it.

Tax evasion is part of our heritage.

This is from Wikipedia but the facts are not important here just the background

In England smuggling first became a recognised problem in the 13th century, following the creation of a national customs collection system by Edward I in 1275.[1] Medieval smuggling tended to focus on the export of highly taxed export goods — notably wool and hides.[2] Merchants also, however, sometimes smuggled other goods to circumvent prohibitions or embargoes on particular trades. Grain, for instance, was usually prohibited from export, unless prices were low, because of fears that grain exports would raise the price of food in England and thus cause food shortages and / or civil unrest. Following the loss of Gascony to the French in 1453, imports of wine were also sometimes embargoed during wars to try and deprive the French of the revenues that could be earned from their main export. One study of smuggling in Bristol in the mid-16th century, based on the records of merchant-smugglers, has shown that the illicit export of goods like grain and leather represented a significant part of the city's business, with many members of the civic elite engaging in it.[3] Grain smuggling by members of the civic elite, often working closely with corrupt customs officers, has also been shown to have been prevalent in East Anglia during the later 16th century.[4]

In England wool continued to be smuggled to the continent in the 17th century, under the pressure of high excise taxes. In 1724 Smuggler Prakash wrote of Lymington, Hampshire, on the south coast of England

"I do not find they have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and roguing; which I may say, is the reigning commerce of all this part of the English coast, from the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End in Cornwall."[5]

The high rates of duty levied on tea and also wine and spirits, and other luxury goods coming in from mainland Europe at this time made the clandestine import of such goods and the evasion of the duty a highly profitable venture for impoverished fishermen and seafarers. In certain parts of the country such as the Romney Marsh, East Kent, Cornwall and East Cleveland, the smuggling industry was for many communities more economically significant than legal activities such as farming and fishing. The principal reason for the high duty was the need for the government to finance a number of extremely expensive wars with France and the United States.

Before the era of sordid drug smuggling and human trafficking, smuggling had acquired a kind of nostalgic romanticism, in the vein of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped:

"Few places on the British coast did not claim to be the haunts of wreckers or mooncussers.[6] The thievery was boasted about and romanticized until it seemed a kind of heroism. It did not have any taint of criminality and the whole of the south coast had pockets vying with one another over whose smugglers were the darkest or most daring. The Smugglers Inn was one of the commonest names for a bar on the coast".[7]

[shoes]

This is my view too. If the scheme broke the law why was it not challenged using the law?

If the government wish to close a loophole then that is OK with me. What is not OK is changing the law retrospectively and calling it clarification, regardless of whether that has happened before or not. Nobody can be certain of anything any more.

This opinion is entirely reasonable. But you forget, HMRC and the government are a bunch of gangsters, you've got their loot, they're gonna get it from you. Occasionally the thin veneer of fake civilisation is scratched away to reveal it's actually the law of the jungle out there. We are the serfs, they own us. Push your luck too much and they'll notice and slam you down.

They make the rules, sometimes they make them up as they go. They cheat. The game is rigged. You can't con the conman.