IQ Consultants, Felicitas Solutions, ECS Trustees - loan repayment demands

[WoffleCopter]

You don't however have any contract or paperwork between yourself and the employing / company paying you. Surely that is fundamental as the devil is in the detail..

The problem here is that you see the lack of signatures / paperwork as a good thing - I see it as the opposite as it allows the other side to provide anything they want as evidence with you having little to contradict it with.

In contract law the burden of proof is lower, but it's still theirs to prove you received/agreed to a contract. An unsigned contract which would essentially mean your were agreeing to work for free or even at your own financial determent in response to correspondence stating your would be saving tax? Really?

[eek]

In contract law the burden of proof is lower, but it's still theirs to prove you received/agreed to a contract. An unsigned contract which would essentially mean your were agreeing to work for free or even at your own financial determent in response to correspondence stating your would be saving tax? Really?

You received money - therefore there was a contract. Whether the contract is the written but unsigned contract or something else is up to the court to decide but once you start talking about tax (which would be irrelevant in the court you are arguing this case in) I suspect the judge would start to take a very close interest in things (and not in a good way). And the truth is that there is a contract, even you talked above about timesheets, a contract of services and promotional materials.

I'm not sure whether it's in this thread or another thread but a while ago I discussed the concept of Schrodinger's money where the money you received from a scheme became 2 different things to different people at the same time you received it. To HMRC the 85% as you received it was income on which tax is due but to the scheme provider it was a loan (which might need ) to be repaid. The problem for any scheme user is that because tax law and contract law are entirely separate both statements could be true at the same time.

[WoffleCopter]

You received money - therefore there was a contract. Whether the contract is the written but unsigned contract or something else is up to the court to decide but once you start talking about tax (which would be irrelevant in the court you are arguing this case in) I suspect the judge would start to take a very close interest in things (and not in a good way). And the truth is that there is a contract, even you talked above about timesheets, a contract of services and promotional materials.

I'm not sure whether it's in this thread or another thread but a while ago I discussed the concept of Schrodinger's money where the money you received from a scheme became 2 different things to different people at the same time you received it. To HMRC the 85% as you received it was income on which tax is due but to the scheme provider it was a loan (which might need ) to be repaid. The problem for any scheme user is that because tax law and contract law are entirely separate both statements could be true at the same time.

In the absence of any contradicting information, the court usually takes the view of a reasonable person. A reasonable person would assume that you worked under the terms of the promotional literature in order to avoid tax. You have now settled said tax with HMRC. It would be highly illogical to save tax only to end up with a much greater repayable debt. Therefore the burden of proof is theirs to provide evidence that you did.

[Wtaf]

I don't work for anyone as Cojak and the other mods will confirm.. I post here as I feel there is a need to provide a rational logical approach when people are being emotional (so irrational) as the second half of your paragraph confirms. So when I returned after a few months away and saw people arguing that no signature meant no contract I felt it right to point out that courts won't see things that way.

As for the lack of a written contract - that was the entire point of those schemes, it's no different from the end of the Wizard of Oz where Toto pulls back the curtain and Dorothy discovers that the Wizard (scheme) is actually an old man. If you had seen the contract the cold light of day might have revealed how flaky the approach they were using was and might have given you time to see the clause that said the money you were receiving wasn't 85% of the contract value but a "loan" of 85% of the contract value.

It was a humorous twist from a previous post. You must be great fun at parties. I will not lose any sleep over a scam like this.

[eek]

In the absence of any contradicting information, the court usually takes the view of a reasonable person. A reasonable person would assume that you worked under the terms of the promotional literature in order to avoid tax. You have now settled said tax with HMRC. It would be highly illogical to save tax only to end up with a much greater repayable debt. Therefore the burden of proof is theirs to provide evidence that you did.

It wouldn't be highly illogical as that was how Employment Benefit trusts worked see Understanding Employment Benefit Trusts (EBT) and the first post of https://www.contractoruk.com/forums/...ght-wrong.html - as I suspect their lawyers would quickly demonstrate - the ideal was that the trust would not enforce the loan but, of cause, they couldn't put that in writing.

[eek]

It was a humorous twist from a previous post. You must be great fun at parties. I will not lose any sleep over a scam like this.

This is a forum where posts have been used in a court of law by HMRC to argue their viewpoint and where people are argued even on this thread that some posters are the current schema owners. Sorry but I'm going to be very clear that I'm not involved I just find it interesting - as if I had graduated a year earlier I probably would have gone into tax...

[WoffleCopter]

It wouldn't be highly illogical as that was how Employment Benefit trusts worked see Understanding Employment Benefit Trusts (EBT) and the first post of https://www.contractoruk.com/forums/...ght-wrong.html - as I suspect their lawyers would quickly demonstrate - the ideal was that the trust would not enforce the loan but, of cause, they couldn't put that in writing.

The difference being that the money originated from your toil to end up in the trust. I don't think the judge would simply ignore this.

Also, the court has the right to look through artificial contractual arrangements setup purely to avoid tax. Who knows, it could even decide that the whole arrangement be unravelled, and the gross amount be returned to the original client for legitimate redistribution, I'm sure the scheme promoters wouldn't want that!

[eek]

The difference being that the money originated from your toil to end up in the trust. I don't think the judge would simply ignore this.

Also, the court has the right to look through artificial contractual arrangements setup purely to avoid tax. Who knows, it could even decide that the whole arrangement be unravelled, and the gross amount be returned to the original client for legitimate redistribution, I'm sure the scheme promoters wouldn't want that!

Which part of the two articles I linked to did you not quite grasp - just because you don't think it's fair doesn't make it wrong in a court of law.

[DealorNoDeal]

How many months have these clowns been threatening to take people to court?

Have they done anything, at all?

Thought not.

[eek]

How many months have these clowns been threatening to take people to court?

Have they done anything, at all?

Thought not.

My concern with that is we don't know how the clowns are working. Were I a clown given the cost of starting a court case (it's 4.5% of the money claimed in the UK, probably £50k plus in the IoM) I would be taking my time and trying to identify which cases would be the best examples to test my arguments with.

Now again I'm not saying that things are heading to court but were I said clown starting the next stage the test cases I picked wouldn't be a poster on this site nor one using a stock letter from an advisor firm.