Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Tax evader's collection confiscated

Tax evasion a waste of time and money. Simply set up a huge multinational comapny and cease paying tax anywhere. Or open the biggest internet supply company in the world and forget all about tax.
We're so upset as the public that we continue to use these suppliers, often everyday, without a thought.........
Nick

Our very own Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted at the highest level of appeal in the Process Mediaset for tax fraud, falsification of accounts, embezzlement, and the creation of black funds in the management of television rights for Mediaset, his television empire. The case also involved a scandal in which the British advocate David Mills was said to have been bribed and to have given false witness.

The trick involved setting up an intermediate companies in tax havens and then paying those companies higher fees than those actually charged by the film distributors. Funds were then transferred to secret bank accounts in Switzerland and the Bahamas. The amount involved was said to be in the order of 280 million euro. In the end he was convicted for tax evasion of "only" 7.3 million euro because the fraud previous to a certain date had fallen under the "statute of limitations". A law that his government had modified, one of many, to the benefit of Silvio Berlusconi.

In the end he was sentenced to four years in prison (reduced to one for an amnesty), a fine of 10 million euro, and banned for two years from public service. That has not stopped him from being the president of his political party and having just as much effect on legislation as if he were actually in the parliament. This has included several conferences with the prime minister. Due to his age, another convenient law, he never served any time in prison and initially was supposed to serve this time under house arrest. He managed to have accepted his request for replacing this with work "socially useful" and his effective sentence was reduced to 4 hours a week working in an old folks home for ten and a half months. That is equivalent to 7 days in prison. All this makes the Grossi case seem very severe by comparison and the eventual judgement will probably be much lighter.

In the bitter words of Ignazio Messina, secretary of the Italia dei Valori party, "In Italy tax fraud is worth while".

In the case involving underage prostitution he has been absolved, on appeal, not because the underage prostitution did not occur, but on the basis that he could not have known the girl was underage. This is despite some evidence to the contrary. In some jurisdictions ignorance of the age of a girl with whom one has a sexual relationship is not considered an excuse.

In today's news the procuratore generale (Pg) of Milan has just filed an appeal in the supreme court against the absolution of Berlusconi in the court of appeal. As a little aside I am astonished that no legal investigation has been made of the now millionaire status of the girl involved and that she has not been prosecuted for perjury. She has made conflicting sworn statements and evidence in court.

Just as well that every court in Italy has, above the judges, the words "The law is equal for everyone".

This is a complex area and some of the detail discussed above is not 100% accurate. I can say that, having been immersed in this zone for the last 43 years.

But first consider that every time you do business with someone, they may not pay the tax due, and keep it to fund a lavish lifestyle. This is especially true with VAT on large value items, but equally true when you pay cash to a tradesman to get a discount. Many of us will have done this at least once in a lifetime.

When you need the state, for example, hospital treatment - if you don't get the service you would like, or are denied treatment due to cost, just bear in mind that if everyone was honest and paid what tax was due, not only would public utilities be better funded, but the tax rates would be less, because you (as an honest tax payer) wouldn't be funding the evaders and avoiders.

At present there is an on-going robust challenge on avoidance schemes, and several high profile schemes have failed at tribunal recently. The key issue is that many schemes are artificially created to avoid tax, without a commercial reason, and case-law is slowly unravelling these artificial schemes.

Celebrities are right in it, because word gets around, and you only see the tip of the iceberg in the public domain. Much more goes on behind the scenes.

The big companies are certainly guilty of tax planning, and remember that shareholders drive the need for profit - but governments are equally guilty of pushing low rates of Corporation Tax to get big business on their patch. You may recall that this was one of the big SNP issues as part of the referendum.

But the smaller business avoids tax using all sorts of scams, which is low level evasion, mainly around manipulation of legal entities, contrived insolvencies and phoenixism.

Before that though is simple extractive fraud which revolves around suppression of cash and secret bank accounts. Any business which takes cash will be doing this at some level. Think pubs and restaurants, and small shops.

The proposed mansion tax is an interesting one, and the wealthy owners of 'mansions' seem to resent these proposals. And yet in London, There are cases of well respected professional people hiding large property deals, and this is widespread, and brings in significant amounts of tax (Capital Gains).

So if you ever receive a 'Nudge Letter' suggesting that you may wish to disclose income or assets, the earlier you co-operate, the bigger the reduction in penalty when it all ends.

The trick for governments is of course to know what levels of tax rate will produce the highest revenue - ie the peak of the Laffer curve.

If people think tax rates are too high, they will try and think up ways of avoiding paying them - and the wealthier you are, the more you have to lose, so the more likely you will try to avoid/evade paying the tax.

That's one reason why flat rate tax schemes tend to produce proportionately higher levels of revenue - they are perceived to be fair, so people quite happily pay them.

We are also in a position now where it wouldn't be too onerous to have banded VAT on a wider range of goods, enabling people to have much more control over the tax they pay through their economic activity. Again, this is likely to be seen as fairer, thus raising the total revenue even though the actual tax rate on some things would be lower.

I quite like paying tax - it means that the business has had a good quarter (VAT) / year (Corporation Tax).

true
A quote from now an employee but used to be a customer

I like to sell something with a £5 profit in it, because if you sell something with £15 profit, you just end up giving the Taxman more

To come back to the Rossi case, when you watch the video, for me it is obvious that they did not like to build a nice collection for their P&J. It looks much more like a warehouse where they have stored "objects", most of them same same in mutiple numbers. It is a storage planned with the intention of a lucrative resell in the furture. Therefore unfortunately no base for a nice museum.

One of the problems in this country is that people who work hard feel it's their duty to pay as little tax as possible because of the volumes of takers doing as little as possible and getting good living on the backs of the tax payer. No to mention how politicians waste tax payers money.

Revenue from income tax has been falling for years which is why tax on spending is becoming more popular eg. insurance, air travel, tobacco, alcohol, transport. Tax is hidden in so many ways ways today and in my opinion, is the future way of making sure everyone pays tax.

I support the idea of a flat rate income tax. I'd also eliminate corporation tax and replace it with a flat rate sales turnover tax paid monthly by all businesses.

The only problem is what to do with the hundreds of thousands of then redundant accountants, tax advisers and tax lawyers....They are the core opposition!!

Stick them all on an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean...