No comparison. One's a disheveled, moaning, shambling mass who need brains and should be shot in the head, while the others are undead.
Evasion is wilfully disobeying the letter of the tax law and not paying the due taxes. Avoidance is minimising the amount of tax you pay, by exploiting things allowed by the letter of the law to do things that were not intended by the law (the "spirit of the law" ) . It appears shorty Sullivan tried to get money into the Spanners (legally allowed) , but did it in such a way (as allowed in the letter of the law) that he gained a tax advantage (not in the spirit of the law) as a by-product.
Because he could do what he did, but not for the reason that he did it. He was trying to evade tax, rather than it just being a handy side effect of his investment.
Because it was not in the spirit of the law. The taxman is allowed to do this, hence the planned appeal ( "I was doing nothing illegal, guv" ) . If shorty Sullivan had minimised his tax bill by say 10K as a result, then the taxman would not really blink. But 700K is a lot of money to save, and was certainly not intended by the laws that were applied. So tis fair comment to claim that rather than the 700K saving being an unintended by-product of the Spanners funding, the relative complexity of the funding structure suggests the 700K saving was the end, and the funding was the means to that end.
I don't believe in English law you have a concept such as the spirit of the law. If so there would be no such thing as a loophole. It is almost an art form framing Acts of Parliament to stop them being imprecise. Wouldn't matter if you could say "aah but the spirit of the law is x".
I think that the BBC article about it is pretty good: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43543273 Sullivan chose to invest £2m in the club, but he clearly did it in a way that was purely designed to give him a massive tax break. He didn't suffer any loss, so there's no loss to be claimed against.
The "spirit of the law" in taxation is the intent. Those representing Sullivan used various laws to the letter, to construct an outcome that was not intended by the laws as devised. "If so there would be no such thing as a loophole." Of course. So the tax man has found one, and is not having it. If it now goes to court, another opinion will be given. And after that, it may become case law, or cause a change in statute law (the latter ironically may be to the detriment of those the law was intended for, and who may have benefited by obeying it) .
The sad thing is that in order to take advantage of those "legal" loopholes to their greatest extent, you have to be able to afford the services of various organisations who will help you do so. In other words, in order to save money on tax, you have to be able to easily afford to pay that tax. I did a temp job once in one of the big consultancies personal tax groups. The work they did in setting up offshore companies, having fictitious board meetings of those companies etc, was unreal.
Regarding avoidance, on paper anyone can do it, assuming you have the intelligence to do so. However : 1. Doing so takes considerable time. 2. The more exotic avoidance malarky has a scale threshold for a decent ROI. So for #1, that is time that you normally have to spend on the day job earning money to pay the bills. And for #2, you don't have a sufficient amount of wealth to make it worthwhile, even if you pay someone else to make the effort on your behalf.
The Spammers are sending out their season ticket renewals. Those renewing [presuming that there will be some] will have to sign a 'good behaviour agreement'. There are 4 conditions including no 'lewd' behaviour, no moving from your seat, no abuse and no disorder. "Nurse, nurse."
£60k of taxpayer money will be used to pay for extra security for Spam's game against Soton. Awaiting my complimentary ticket in the post...
Can't understand why Lord Dildo decided to rip of the taxman, they do a fine job of it themselves without his help.
Just watched on BEin Sports an episode of Keys & Gray - anyway they were discussing the Spammers game v Soton this weekend and amongst all the hand wringing and tut tutting Richard Keys actually described it as "The Taxpayers Arena". Now where have I heard that before
Baroness Pigface has used her Sun column to say Dele Alli should not resort to cheap tricks. This being the same Baroness Pigface who repeatedly used her column in The Sun to smear Spurs for having the temerity to submit an offer for the White Elephant as the tendering process freely allowed, which had absolutely nothing to do with how she and her Tory chums had conspired to con hundreds of millions of pounds out of the British taxpayer to pay for...
'Lady' Brady's familial crest and motto... please log in to view this image Redde Nihil Decipiat in Omnibus
Just come across this on the BBC website...David Moyes putting fires out with gasoline... "If you're a player, you want to come to a club where the supporters are right behind the team. You don't want to come somewhere where they're not." Good one, Dave. You've been there 5 minutes, have the worst win ratio of any manager that they've ever had and now you're telling them that it's all their fault? You'd better have a lot more than £60k's worth of security ready if you go 1-0 down to Southampton.
