Sunday, April 10, 2016

David Cameron has a moral duty to pay tax on money he received from his father's offshore accounts


David Cameron had a go at Jimmy Carr in 2012, saying that Carr's use of a tax-avoiding offshore account was "morally wrong".

We know that Cameron received half a million from his parents - £300k from his father Ian, and another £200k from his mother. His father was a stockbroker and owned about £10 million at one stage in his career. We do not know the provenance of his half million pocket money, but we do know that Cameron received £30K from his father's Blairmore offshore account managed by Mossack Fonseca. Blairmore was carefully crafted so that all necessary papers were signed by people not resident in the UK, in order to avoid UK tax.

When he received the £30k, Cameron says that he paid all appropriate legal taxes, and we have no evidence to disbelieve him on this point, at present.

On the other hand, that £30k legacy would have been smaller had it been invested in a UK based account, because every year Ian would have had to declare the interest received, and pay UK income tax on it. Instead, all the interest went back into the fund.

Therefore, although he (says) he has paid all legal taxes, Cameron still has a moral duty to repay to HMRC the amount of UK taxes that his £30k would have paid over all the years it was basking in the tax free Bahamian sun.

I am not an accountant, thank all the gods, but it would not be difficult for a accountant to work out the size of the moral duty Cameron owes to his neighbour in No 11 Downing St. (Who has his own issues, btw).

The same moral duty would also apply to all monies that have come to Cameron from his father's offshore accounts.

Cameron will soon be saying that it is time to draw a line under this episode and move on.

Sorry, Dave, not until you have repaid your moral duty.


More: Dodgy Dave song



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