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**Hugh** · 08-04-2016, 23:56

A letter in Friday's Times.

Quote:

Sir, David Cameron wants to lead the global campaign to stamp out tax avoidance but his actions suggest he is encouraging the practice rather than battling it. He stopped the EU developing a register of personal trusts, which allow rich individuals to hide their money. He changed tax rules, like the controlled foreign company rules, to create tax haven conditions in the UK so that global companies set up artificial structures here to avoid tax.

And he has yet to deliver on tax havens. Transparency is critical so that we know who owns the assets hidden across the world. We can then identify unlawful activity and collect the appropriate taxes. Having public registers of ownership in the tax havens matters. Our overseas territories include the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Some refuse to compile such registers, others to publish them.

In 1991 a Conservative government used Privy Council powers to instruct the overseas territories to abolish capital punishment. In 2000 Labour used the same powers to outlaw discrimination against gays. Cameron now has the chance to use the powers to instruct the UK tax havens to compile and publish registers of beneficial ownership. He should do so.

Dame Margaret Hodge MP (Lab)

Chair, public accounts select committee 2010-15

http://www.offshoreumbrellacompanies...x-avoider-too/

Quote:

Offshore Tax Avoider

You couldn’t make it up. Not too long after it was revealed that two senior managers at HMRC were putting their salaries through Limited Companies to save tax, whilst hunting down genuine contractors who were doing so, it’s now being revealed that the Hammer of Google, Facebook, Starbucks etc., Labour MP Margaret Hodge, has a share in an offshore fund as well and is an offshore tax avoider.

Just as it was revealed that Chancellor Osborne is an offshore tax avoider and has an offshore family trust worth £4.5m and that David Cameron’s father Ian was an offshore tax avoider and made most of his money (and David Cameron’s inheritance) from offshore funds, it is now being revealed that the Chairperson of the Committee which looks into tax affairs and tax avoidance has a share in an offshore fund too and is an offshore tax avoider too.

Stemcor

She has a shareholding in Stemcor – which paid just 0.01% tax last year. Google and Amazon would be proud of that. Hodge claimed in a grilling by Michael Crick that she just had a small shareholding in the company run by her brother who is an offshore tax avoider.

However it turns out that her shareholding is 1.26% of the company. That would mean that she would have been paid out £56,939 in dividends last year. Her shareholding is now worth £1.8m – hardly a tiny, tiny amount as she claimed.

Stemcor have confirmed that it doesn’t even include shareholdings in her children’s names. It turns out that she owns several million pounds worth of shares when you include her children’s shareholdings – which will now pay no inheritance tax on it.

She was asked to explain what other purpose that there could be other than avoiding tax for her share in the trust? She hadn’t replied so far.

It’s always been the case that those in the know have been using these tax avoidance schemes to save paying their full whack of taxes. The top Tories have been offshore tax avoiders for a long time. Now it looks like Labour MPs are at it too – while bashing multinational companies and genuine contractors who now use offshore umbrella companies.