Reply to: Who's reading the EBT threads?

[edgy about edge]

hindsight is a wonderful thing

I don't think anyone who got involved way back in EBT's understood the risks of retrospective tax actions against a perfectly legal scheme at that point in time.

Its totally unfair and against peoples human rights - they legislated in 2010 if you carried on you deserve what you get but before that they should accept it was their failure and let sleeping dogs lie

[Waldorf]

The whole loan scheme is so obviously dodgy that I'm surprised more people didn't simply ask their clients to pay them in reddies.

What would be funny if all the EBTers now had to pay back the "loans". We might find they suddenly agree that they weren't really loans in the first place, and stop the whinging about having to pay tax.

I don't have a lot of sympathy.

+1

These are high risk dodgy schemes.

Whilst we can all agree that tax avoidance is legal, these are what are classed as aggressive tax avoidance, using long winded processes to achieve a goal that parliament did not intend them to be used for.

The potential extra gains are not that great in any case, so for peace of mind I will be sticking to running my own limited company.

I am sure that the forthcoming budget will see a further crack down on these schemes and other tax avoidance schemes, after all the recent publicity, it is an easy goal for the government.

[VectraMan]

You would have been better off just not declaring any income at all, that way HMRC wouldn't have known you were a 'registered' offender!

The whole loan scheme is so obviously dodgy that I'm surprised more people didn't simply ask their clients to pay them in reddies.

What would be funny if all the EBTers now had to pay back the "loans". We might find they suddenly agree that they weren't really loans in the first place, and stop the whinging about having to pay tax.

I don't have a lot of sympathy.

[eek]

Is this another one of those schemes whereby small businesses attempted to pay about the same level of tax as Amazon and the likes but got caught out by retrospective 'clarification' of tax legislation?

In this case I don't think there is anything retrospective. EBTs were legal but had/have very tight rules regarding how they work.

I very much doubt ever scheme met those tight rules every time.

[stek]

Who's reading the EBT threads?

peace of mind

Sorry! Restricted Internet at work have to use Tapatalk and my eyes aren't what they were..

I know it's 'peace of mind' honest!

[Mich the Tester]

Is this another one of those schemes whereby small businesses attempted to pay about the same level of tax as Amazon and the likes but got caught out by retrospective 'clarification' of tax legislation?

[ChimpMaster]

Certainly after these schemes were forced to 'register' with HMRC, the writing was on the wall that investigations were certain.

You would have been better off just not declaring any income at all, that way HMRC wouldn't have known you were a 'registered' offender!

[Ketchup]

If you look at all the post counts of the posters on those threads, very few exceed 10. I think regular posters on here know these are bad ideas.

[EternalOptimist]

Gulp!

Glad I've never gone for one of these 'schemes'. Piece of mine is worth more than an extra few quid...

peace of mind

[eek]

What if it is legal ? Can you not use the excuse of "retrospective" law change to escape any prosecution ?

For them to be legal they have to operate in a particular way and the setup / paper work has to be 100% correct. My worry would be that in most cases neither of those items are watertight.

[Wanderer]

Nope, where are they ? Is it one of those pay only 1% tax scheme ?

Plus a 10-15% cut to the scheme provider....

[SimonMac]

What if it is legal ? Can you not use the excuse of "retrospective" law change to escape any prosecution ?

The S58 thing is retrospective and not a valid excuse

[fullyautomatix]

+ a few hundred. I know IR35 is bad but risking one of those schemes is (personally) utter madness regardless of what the smooth talking fly by nights say.

What if it is legal ? Can you not use the excuse of "retrospective" law change to escape any prosecution ?

[eek]

Gulp!

Glad I've never gone for one of these 'schemes'. Peace of mind is worth more than an extra few quid...

+ a few hundred. I know IR35 is bad but risking one of those schemes is (personally) utter madness regardless of what the smooth talking fly by nights say.

[fullyautomatix]

Nope, where are they ? Is it one of those pay only 1% tax scheme ?