Guardian reveal: temp agencies' tax avoidance scheme costs 'hundreds of millions'

[PerfectStorm]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ds-of-millions

[PerfectStorm]

My reading of that setup and watching the video is that they've set up loads of two-director companies to get the national insurance discount?

[malvolio]

2 gets you 10 it's the ex-EBT and similar providers who vanished into the night with their clients' money a couple of years back setting up their new money making schemes. I don't know which is worse; these people being allowed to sell such schemes to a gullible public or that gullible public being stupid or greedy enough to buy into them (Which they are - there are fairly regular posts on CUK about people who have joined a scheme after 2012 bleating about rude letters from the taxman)

[LondonManc]

"a provider of the schemes"

There's that word again. When will people stop joining up with schemes and simply play by the rules to make life easier for all of us? While we all know that we can do a better job with our own hard-earned than the chancellor probably could, we have to accept that we're on a good whack and pay the appropriate amount.

[eek]

"a provider of the schemes"

There's that word again. When will people stop joining up with schemes and simply play by the rules to make life easier for all of us? While we all know that we can do a better job with our own hard-earned than the chancellor probably could, we have to accept that we're on a good whack and pay the appropriate amount.

Here I don't think its the workers joining the schemes its the agencies putting people on them. It's hardly news though people have been doing this since 3 weeks after the £2000 NI allowance appeared.

Mind you it could be worse. Agencies used to put Teachers in companies based on the Isle of Mann.... HMRC really didn't like that nor did they like the fact the easy targets weren't at fault so couldn't be pursued.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

It makes you wonder why the government didn't expect somebody to come up with this idea when they introduced the employers allowance. What a tulip show that particular piece of legislation has turned out to be.

First of all it had the effect of allowing very small businesses like us to reduce our NIC bill (if we even had one). They decided they didn't like that so in came the ill thought out exception for one man companies. It didn't take long for people to realise how easily this could be worked around.

And now this.

We could argue all day long about the ethics of people promoting these schemes and those who are content to use them (almost certainly unbeknownst to the actual temp workers who just see a different name on their payslip) but if the government stopped introducing tulipty tax law perhaps there'd be fewer loopholes to exploit.

[NotAllThere]

it complies with all of the laws as they’re currently written.

And that never goes wrong does it?

[eek]

And that never goes wrong does it?

You have to seriously tulip HMRC off for things to become retrospective....

What will happen is that HMRC will pick some victims and subject them to some through investigations...

[DotasScandal]

You have to seriously tulip HMRC off for things to become retrospective....

That's not quite how it works, we reckon. HMRC's latest retrospective shenanigans seem to us more directly motivated by HMRC's will to cover up their own inaction (or shall we say complicity) with regard to all these "arrangements", sometimes for over a decade. Even influential professional bodies like the ICAEW say so, and very bluntly.
Besides, the "tax avoidance" narrative is a good one to justify looting some plebs.

[malvolio]

You have to seriously tulip HMRC off for things to become retrospective....

What will happen is that HMRC will pick some victims and subject them to some through investigations...

Sadly that's how it works. Non-corporate taxes are a personal responsibility so you have to prosecute an individual.