Paradise lost
We owe a debt to the Süddeutsche Zeitung as it starts to trawl through the millions of documents in the ‘Paradise Papers’.
It is noticeable that every hour or so a new revelation hits the online press.
Theresa May has refused to initiate further probes or even set up a register of such offshore shell ‘companies’ or family trusts. She takes refuge in her usual wooden rendering of “people should pay the tax that is due”.
Now there is a conundrum. Tax due under which fiscal system? In which British overseas tax (avoidance) haven?
HMG, where HM is also revealed as having investments made in such tax havens, we are told by HMG’S spokespersons, has been able to increase the amounts of tax due from avoiders and evaders.
Yet, a list of such companies in British overseas territories would enable probes to be undertaken more easily and would enable the Government to identify the persons directly or indirectly involved.
The reason given by Theresa May for not probing further that we are now recovering more tax is a non sequitur. Perhaps she is feart that more information may surface implicating HM’S investment practitioners. Or is she simply clueless and merely reacting to events? Yet May must beware. the information from the Paradise Papers is coming constantly on stream.
It could rebound and show her decision not to have full oversight or to be negligent. But that is her possible Waterloo moment.
The government is really on a shoogly nail. It is detached from reality ranging from Brexit through sex scandals and ministerial failings (latest, Priti Patel) to tax evasion revelations which impact to the top of the UK constitutional structure.
JOHN EDGAR Merrygreen Place, Stewarton
I am writing to my pension providers today to tell them that I am setting up an offshore company account in Jersey and that all future pension payments should be made via that account, so that I can then get free loans from my company and avoid paying any tax on my earnings.
Well if this scheme is good enough for the Queen, lords of the land and actors, then why shouldn’t pensioners share in this tax-free bonanza? DENNIS FORBES GRATTAN Mugiemoss Road, Bucksburn,
Aberdeen
The revelations of the socalled Paradise Papers show that the super-rich are a law unto themselves, living in a world completely separate from the vast majority of humanity.
There will be the usual declarations that those named within the Paradise Papers have done nothing illegal.
This should not bring the situation under control because public anger focuses on the fact that everything described in the Paradise Papers was both legal and commonplace among the super-rich.
The Paradise Papers show Britain and its dependent territories stand at the epicentre of an international web of corruption serving the interests of a financial oligarchy that rules the entire planet. The Tories and their government of multi-millionaires, aristocrats and people on the make preside over the imposition of savage austerity and the destruction of jobs, wages and essential services, all for the purpose of making those they serve, and who pay no tax, even richer. None of the anger aroused among workers by the exposure of this cesspool of greed and corruption finds genuine expression within the official political set-up in the UK.
ALAN HINNRICHS Gillespie Terrace, Dundee
Thanks to the leaked Paradise Papers it has been revealed that the Queen’s estate and the super-rich stick millions in tax havens of the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, yet the media is parroting the laughable Buckingham Palace spin saying “there’s no suggestion that the Queen is avoiding tax”. Sure, and I’m Brad Pitt.
While millions of workers live on less than a Living Wage, there are people on benefits that are prosecuted for not declaring savings and assets worth more than £5,500. But this lot are allowed to get away with it.
I’ve detested the idea of monarchy since I could first formulate a political thought. Privileged grovelling medieval idiocy. This merely confirms how right I am.
CHRIS DAVIES Chapel Place, Denbigh