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The two situations and structures involved were very, very different. Cameron did not achieve any tax benefit from his investment: had the fund been UK register
by retube 10y ago
The two situations and structures involved were very, very different. Cameron did not achieve any tax benefit from his investment: had the fund been UK registered his tax liabilities would have been no different. It was a simple investment fund which paid dividends like any other, with those dividends and any realised capital gains being subject to uk tax like any other.
The Carr scheme on the other hand, which involved the vehicle making loans to investors to offset their gains and thus reduce tax liability was described by hmrc as being at the very aggressive end of avoidance.
Cameron was not avoiding or reducing tax liability, Carr was.
- raesene9 10y agoThat's not necessarily entirely true. David Cameron's father set up offshore trusts in ways that would avoid UK taxes (offshore), David Cameron inherited money from his father and had funds in the trust (which he sold prior to becoming prime minister). So it's a not unreasonable position to suggest that he inherited more money due to his father's trust avoiding tax.. Citation for the trust avoiding UK tax - http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-david-cameron-father-tax-bahamas http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-da... Citation for David Cameron having received financial benefit from that trust http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-admits-he-profited-fathers-offshore-fund-panama-papers http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-ad...
- mattmanser 10y agoCarr's decision required him to do something really dodgy, and obviously dodgy, himself. I knew people doing the same thing and they knew they were dodging tax. They just came up with justifications of why they didn't deserve to pay 'so much' tax. Inheriting money from your Dad, who may have been avoiding tax, is a whole different matter. They're just ethically in totally different leagues.
- raesene9 10y agoWell David Cameron Also invested in the fund himself, he didn't just inherit money from it. I'd agree however that it wasn't David Cameron who had serious ethical issues there but his father who setup a trust designed explicitly to avoid tax, shopped jurisdictions to lower the tax and placed local people in nominal roles to make it seem that it was controlled locally when it was not. David Cameron hasn't been so keen to tar his father with the same brush as people like Jimmy Carr. "Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday called Mr Carr's use of the scheme "morally wrong"." I don't see him saying the same about his father...
- logfromblammo 10y agoExactly. The professional politician currently holding the most prestigious position in British government should be held to a much stricter standard of ethics. The guy went to Eton and Oxford, and was handed early career favors by his father and godfather--a poster child for good ol'boy networking. The entertainer that makes his living selling laughter and levity can make more mistakes--many more--before triggering my disdain. I am simply far more willing to be critical of the use of tax loopholes by the class that creates them, than by anyone else using them as part of an effort to crash the gates of that class. Carr knew it was dodgy, had to rationalize it to himself, and apologized. Still completely legal. Cameron's dad blithely accepted it as the right of his class, and never even felt the need to justify it to anyone. Still completely legal. But it was the same darned thing, sheltering accounts in the channel islands. It's just that British society expects upper-class twits to crap on the public good, and it expects everyone who starts lower and moves up a rank in income to always pay a little bit back to the ones left behind.