How easy is it to find out the tax arrangements of MPs

[MercladUK]

I am talking family trusts, saving and investments, offshore holdings etc etc?

Name and shame is what I am after

[malvolio]

Probably start with Register of Members' Interests...

[dangerouswhensober]

The words "bloody hypocrites" springs to mind ...

I am talking family trusts, saving and investments, offshore holdings etc etc?

Name and shame is what I am after

You might have to do it for each member individually. Here's a few starters though:

David Cameron:

So it was perhaps for sentimental reasons that the offshore fund Ian Cameron helped to establish in the tax haven of Panama shares the name. Blairmore Holdings Inc, just like Blairmore House, is a monument to wealth obtained overseas.

Valued today at £25m, the Panamanian fund was established in 1982 while David was still at Eton, the school that his father attended. At the time, Ian Cameron still worked at Panmure Gordon, the City broking firm at which three generations of the family were senior partners.

What little we know of the historic activities of Blairmore Holdings comes from a shareholders' prospectus issued in 2006, less than a year after David Cameron became leader of the opposition.

It states: "The affairs of the fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for UK taxation purposes."

Explaining that the firm has access to banking services in Panama as well as auditors and trading offices in the Bahamas, Blairmore Holdings was certainly keen to convince investors that the business would be beyond the reach of Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs.

(from David Cameron's family fortune: the Jersey, Panama and Geneva connection | Politics | The Guardian)

David Gauke:

Exchequer secretary David Gauke's statements about the moral wrongs of tax avoidance have come under fire following the revelation that he used to work for a law firm that helped rich clients avoid taxes.

.... the Guido Fawkes blog has revealed that Gauke worked as a solicitor at Macfarlanes law firm between 1999 and 2005.

The firm's website advertises its "particular expertise in the structuring of tax efficient, quite based, incentive plans".

"We are able to develop innovative solutions to the most complex tax issues when necessary," the company adds. Gauke's own website only briefly mentions that he worked for "a leading City firm". According to the Treasury he did not work for the Macfarlanes tax department.

The blog continues: "Guido thinks Gauke should look in the mirror the next time he thinks about lecturing us on the morality of taxation".

It was also revealed that Gauke's wife, Rachel, is a corporate tax law specialist who works as a professional support lawyer for Lexis Nexis, a company that provides tax information to the private and public sector.

(from: David Gauke Worked for 'Tax Avoidance' Firm before Job at Treasury)

He worked as a trainee solicitor with Richards Butler from 1995, being admitted as a solicitor in 1997. From 1999 to 2005, he was a solicitor in the financial services group at Macfarlanes, a corporate law firm.

Gauke claimed £10,248.32 in stamp duty and fees involved in the purchase of his second home in London, a flat. A Channel 4 Dispatches programme revealed that he was claiming expenses on the flat in central London despite having a property located only one hour away on public transport.

Gauke sold the flat in August 2012, keeping £27,000, the property price having increased by £67,000 since purchase. He paid nearly £40,000 of this to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) as MPs only have to pay back any profit made in the previous two years.

He told the UK public that negotiating a price discount with a tradesmen for paying in cash for the purposes of evading tax is morally wrong.

(from David Gauke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary, defended the Treasury’s use of experts from the “big four" accountancy firms – Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers – to advise on tax law. He rejected criticism from the Commons Public Accounts Committee that such staff could be “poacher turned gamekeeper turned poacher” because they could advise clients on how to avoid tax after returning to their accountancy firms.

Mr Gauke said: “We’ve benefited from their involvement in developing the law. We are benefiting from accountants going around the world to their clients saying ‘invest in the United Kingdom', so I don’t see there’s a conflict of interest there.”

(from Tax avoidance: Treasury minister dismisses 'absurd' warning that HMRC is)

George Osborne:

... Dispatches reveals his family has set up offshore trusts, one of the most common ways for the super rich to avoid paying inheritance tax – put simply, there will be no inheritance tax to pay on the death of Mr Osborne’s father, a saving of up to £1.6m.

Mr Osborne no longer declares his interest in his family trust in the House of Commons register of members’ interests.

(from: Osborne, Mitchell and Hammond accused of tax avoidance | Left Foot Forward)

[StrengthInNumbers]

But tax planning is only allowed in exclusive club ..... How dare a normal joe on street uses it

[DotasScandal]

How dare a normal joe on street uses it

Verily, that is the greatest sin.

Know where your place is (and stay there), or be destroyed.

[NotAllThere]

Step 1 - take out a subscription to Private Eye.

[webberg]

I am talking family trusts, saving and investments, offshore holdings etc etc?

Name and shame is what I am after

Legally this is difficult.

Start with the Cabinet rules. I think if you are a member of the Cabinet, then aside from your salary the rest of your wealth is put into a blind trust?

When that happens there are sometimes details to be extracted.

Most often the tabloids and lefty papers seek guilt by association rather than direct. The current generation of MP's (all colours) are probably better at hiding their financial dealings than previous members having learnt the hard way.

[foobar]

David Cameron MP Ltd

A quick check on companies house and I see a "David Cameron MP Ltd"...

[dangerouswhensober]

I think this could be a good long-term project for the future - especially for members & friends of "The Big Group".

What we could possibly do is:

(a) Look at the composition of the new Parliament - especially those MPs who were (and continue to be) prominent in bashing the small-time tax optimisers (steering clear of the 'a' word).
(b) Divvy up the target list of MPs between a group of 'investigators' amongst us - each investigator would probably end up with no more than 2-3 names to check out.
(c) Allow a period of time for each investigator to dig up the available facts (but pool sources of info, leads, cross-references, etc. on a regular basis).
(d) Then, on a target date, present the results and decide on further action.

Who knows - if a nice juicy piece of underhanded/hypocritical behaviour is uncovered, the media would probably be quite interested - and that exposure can only be good for the cause.

It seems to me that, with the development of 'Big Data', Data Warehouses & Data Analytics, uncovering facts about any individual or institution in the UK is geeting easier by the day.

BTW - Re: "Legally this is difficult" - to get the facts is not as difficult as you might think - what might be legally difficult is using those facts in a court ...

(OK - I'll 'fess up - in the technology world, I'm a data SME :-))

[DotasScandal]

I like your style! Count me in.
Never saying no to shining some sunglight onto these hypocritical vampires.