Stars face massive payback demands as HMRC probes

[AtW]

Rules are rules. If people are able to game them, blame the legislators for writing them badly. Or in many cases, writing them at all.

I choose to blame both - out of the two groups I certainly have the least sympathy for tax dodgers who take the piss.

In this case HMRCs argument appears to be that the rules were actually broken.

What pisses me off is that this tulip happens in this country - wtf happened with genteleman agreements and acting in the spirit of the rules rather than letter? Would a member of a respected club who abused the spirit of the rules and decided to stick to the letter of the rules keep respect and not get kicked out?

[centurian]

What pisses me off is that this tulip happens in this country - wtf happened with genteleman agreements and acting in the spirit of the rules rather than letter?

It went out the window when MP's decided that the letter of their expense rules was more important than the spirit of them.

However, from this article it appears the rules may have been broken - whether this will stand up in court is another matter.

[AtW]

It went out the window when MP's decided that the letter of their expense rules was more important than the spirit of them.

I am pretty sure all tax evasion by the wealthy has been going on for much longer and also the damage in terms of lost tax revenue is much higher than whatever MPs did.

The biggest damage MPs cause is not by abusing expense system but by voting to totally retarded laws.

[xoggoth]

In most cases there is no excuse for badly written legislation that provides these loopholes.

Does it never occur to them to examine tax law thoroughly to see how it might be used in a way that was not intended? Or to monitor how the legislation is being used after it was passed? One assumes this scheme was not a secret.

As someone said above it's just as well they don't design aircraft software, there would be planes crashing left, right and centre to a chorus of, oooh we never thought of that!

[centurian]

It sounds easy, but part of the problem is that you have a few hundred people, who are not professionals in this area, drafting the legislation - and on the other side you have thousands of hardened professionals picking through every single word looking for the slightest crack.

The difference between legislation and aircraft is that you don't have 1000s of aircraft engineers trying every way possible to bring down as many aircraft as they can.

Even so, they never thought that ice could build up in the fuel on long haul flights if the conditions are cold. To me, it seems obvious (now), but all those highly experienced engineers never thought of it until BA38 belly flopped onto Heathrow.

Loopholes in law are pretty much inevitable. However leaving them open for years (BN66 etc.) is unacceptable.

[AtW]

The difference between legislation and aircraft is that you don't have 1000s of aircraft engineers trying every way possible to bring down as many aircraft as they can.

The key difference is that even if someone finds a hole to bring airplane down (blow it up with C4) that would not be ok for that person to claim that it was fault of engineers.

The locks on my door are not very good - does it mean a thief can walk in and take what he likes saying it is my fault?

All schemes whose primary purpose is to avoid tax should have been disallowed in the first place - if you are not 200% certain, don't take legal lookholes especially if you get paid millions in the first place, that's just pure greed.

[RichardCranium]

It does not help that the House of Lords is no more.

When the Lords was filled with life peers who had an interest in the very long-term financial status and stability of the country, they made their feelings known.

But they have been replaced by cronies.

On top of that, the Lords prevented knee-jerk law-making, which is invariably bad law-making. By spending months pulling proposed laws to bits and re-drafting them, it allowed an awful lot of consideration, professional input and public scrutiny before they became law.

Now the Commons can make up any old crap and force it through.

And, funnily enough, it is crap legislation and crap taxation.

That's what happens when the country is run by a failed lawyer and a failed economist who exercise absolute power.

[AtW]

Now the Commons can make up any old crap and force it through.

whips

I was suprised to learn that there are these so-called "whips" - ffs, members of Parliament are voted for individually, wtf made it legal to make them vote for anything they don't agree with?

[Doggy Styles]

The difference between legislation and aircraft is that you don't have 1000s of aircraft engineers trying every way possible to bring down as many aircraft as they can.

But my point was that events do that. A broken wire here, a bit of ice there, a crack in the metal... Safety checks and procedures in manufacturing and operation need to cover a million things that can go wrong.

[xoggoth]

you have a few hundred people, who are not professionals in this area,

I suspect you are right centurion and that is the insanity of it. That, with all their waste, the government does not have the real experts, although one suspects the money they lose or waste in investigations comes to rather more.

From their history one suspects also that government organisations like the FSA do not have the expertise to properly look beyond the balance sheets, not simply at the scale of company debt and credit, but at the nature of them.

PS In aircraft design there are many aircraft engineers trying to do just that. They do it on paper and in tests and in advance. Is there any equivalent in tax law where reviewers at several levels look in detail at the design, at every stage from outline proposal to and final draft try and see what is wrong with it?

Some of the mistakes are pure idiocy, like them apparently not realising that having a lower CT threshold would increase limited company registrations by the self employed. Equivalent to not realising you shouldn't shut an aircraft's engines down before landing that one.