Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
Does anyone actually understand what Cameron is alleged to have done or not? Everyone is angry, it's all over the papers and I don't understand it and suspect most people reading it don't understand either. We need to know more than 'tax haven' because if, as the interview said, he said tax on it then what taxes did he dodge?
God I wish some papers would just print a unbiased fact-check of why/how etc of these kinds of stories.
It's impossible to form a fair judgement of this if you don't understand what 'it' is.
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Starting with Cameron, he's in the clear legally, but boy has he made a hash of getting there. Going from "Nope, it's private" to "What tax haven funds, never seen them" to "Well I may have had shares but I put it through HMRC" was pretty dumb.
I don't think he's done anything wrong, but his "crime" is truth evasion, rather than tax evasion. No, he doesn't need to resign, and I'm sure he took his approach out of dis-respect to the press rather than the taxpayer, but it doesn't set a good example for honesty in politics.
Anyway, yes we are nowhere near the full facts of this whole leak due to the sheer magnitude of it. I want there to be a proper analysis of the "big" cases here categorised (By impartial economic experts, not journalists):
1: Tax Avoidance, those people who used Panama as a source of privacy, not to break the law
2: Tax Evaders, the people who used Panama as a way to lie to tax authorities and hide wealth from proper taxation.
3: Dodgy dealings, money laundering, sanctions evasion etc.
At the moment, we keep on getting spoonfed information that journalists are crowing about looking dodgy, but using ambiguous language as THEY likely don't know if it is category 1 or 2 either. Things like Cameron's family affairs are being presented as category 1 by some parts of the media when there is little actual evidence to suggest it when you properly look at it.