After the Panama Papers leak there was evidence that David Cameron's father, Ian, had involvement in offshore accounts; meaning he was avoiding tax. Not evading tax, which is illegal, but avoiding which is legal. Please note the difference.
It was then discovered that he inherited from his father, who died in 2010, £300,000, £25,000 short of paying inheritance tax
In 2011, a year after his father's death, David Cameron's mother, Mary, 'gifted' David two separate instalments of £100,000.
This extra £200,000 was then deemed by the public as part of the possible inheritance from his father and only given to him after as a 'gift' so that he avoided, not evaded remember, paying an estimated £80,000 in inheritance tax.
Follow it all so far?
So, in essence, Cameron inherited a lot of money and by using a very simple method evaded paying a huge amount of tax for it.
Cameron has been massively against these 'loopholes' and has quite vocally stated that the UK should crackdown on those who are avoiding tax. It was because of his previous statements that some felt he should step down as PM.
Now, if you're not so aware of how hashtags work, for them to 'trend' there has to be a high amount of users using them and indeed there was a LOT of people tweeting #ResignCameron.
However, the vast majority of people using this hashtag were writing that Cameron should resign because he's avoided tax, or from the ignorant few, illegally not paid tax.
Cameron had/has done nothing illegal. He had simply invested well and made sure that he made the most money he could.
Should he have declared all the money as one and paid the subsequent tax with it?
Of course he should have but honestly, if you were in his position, would have you?
Let's say your mother or father pass away and you find a way to make sure you get all of the inheritance which is simple enough to do and not illegal, this being if the inheritance is over £325,000 and thus qualifying you to pay inheritance tax. Would you honestly say, "no, make sure we put it all together and pay £60,000 in tax, rather than having it for ourselves" ?
If you would then good, great, brilliant! You have a morally strong personality.
But Cameron, doing what I think the majority of us would do, should resign?
Oh, come on!
You have cooperations such as Apple, Starbucks, Google etc. avoiding billions of pounds of tax. However, you still use them at free will, paying into them and sipping your coffee without batting an eyelid. One man, however, avoids paying inheritance tax and he's the devil? To be honest, you most likely have friends or even family who don't pay income tax. Would you react in the same way?
Cameron came out and published his tax details and revealed that in 2014/15 alone he paid almost £76,000 in tax. He was the first MP to do so and, to people's disappointment, proved he'd done nothing illegal.
I worry that people hate Cameron simply because he's rich and had a wealthy upbringing. That's not a reason to dislike someone. Some people are born into better conditions than others. It's unlucky for us who have to worry about money and constantly think about when the next payday is coming but it's the way the world works unfortunately.
If you are someone who genuinely thinks Cameron should resign because he acted upon principles that he has criticised previously, then OK. I personally think it's a bit of a light reason to resign, but OK.
In my eyes too many were upset that he had that much money in the first place and were simply jealous of his position and wealth.
You can't have a go at someone for being rich.
You can't have a go at someone for trying to expand the amount of money they have.
David Cameron can be a tosser at the best of times but this whole fiasco has not been one of them. He simply did what the majority of us would have done.
For a lot of people, the tax avoidance isn't the issue. It's the dishonesty, the lying by omission, the hypocrisy and the lack of transparency that has always been rife within the Tory party. There are several flaws within your blog post, which if you read quite a lot of the tweets (which, I know isn't easy, there's a lot of trolling, idiocy and incoherent rhetoric to dig through) are disproven. I shall list some of them to make your life easier.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not we would do the same thing as David Cameron in his situation isn't relevant to the protest and the situation. We wouldn't know -what- we'd do in that situation, because being part of the 99%, we are highly unlikely to get there and as such, spend no time contemplating that particular hypothetical scenario. It doesn't -matter- what he's done anymore, at this point in time he just has to step down, there are too many people calling for his resignation. He is supposed to represent the people of this country, and by staying Prime Minister he is going against the wishes of voters (most of those I have come across voted for him, I'd like to add) and all that will happen is that he'll drag the country down with him.
It doesn't matter what Corporations do, that is -again- irrelevant to the situation. Personally, I boycott Apple and Starbucks and -would- boycott google, if I had a choice. Considering they power most of the ads, webpages, search engines and browsers, it's kind of hard to do. No one ever said that David Cameron was the devil, they said that the lack of transparency over the tax avoidance was -finally- what pushed them over the edge, it was merely the tiny straw that broke the metaphorical camel's back...
About his tax returns: If there was anything illegal to find, they wouldn't -be- in his tax returns, that's kind of the point of "illegal" and not getting caught. If they -were- in his tax returns, we'd have found out a long time ago, there would've been stink and either he'd have been out by now, or the whole lot would've been brushed under the rug as per usual.
DeleteI can't talk for most people, but my husband and I are totally backing the #CameronResign campaign, and we -wish- we could be at the protests, but with a small child it's not feasible. We do -not- hate Cameron for being rich, we don't even hate him all that much, we merely wish him to stand down for the constant bleeding of this country's people. The way he covers his backside in these situations doesn't help either, the forever repeated misleading rhetoric that is spouted is (finally) very quickly beginning to be seen through by a majority of the population.
What I hate about the tax avoidance situation is that whilst he is upping taxes for the poor, giving tax breaks to corporations and rich people, trying to privatise something that doesn't belong to him (the NHS) -and- the academisation of all of the schools, is that he is doing all of this under the guise of "balancing the books" and trying to "lower the deficit" (which is crap by the way, this government under Cameron and Osborne have lost us our AAA credit rating, not labour) whilst simultaneously avoiding (and evading, and defrauding but I'll explain those later) the tax system that paid for his child's and father's disabilities, that helped his children be born, and that will -eventually- give him his pension.
Now, on the subject of evasion: The way that Cameron supposedly dodged the inheritance tax, is actually illegal. A gift in that sense, because it was given less that 8 years after his father died and came directly from his mother's inheritance (which isn't touched by inheritance tax, due to the surviving spouse(s) exemption) and can be seen as it is being seen now, that they did it that way to evade Inheritance tax. If proof is found, David Cameron may go to prison for a -very- long time.
(Last Point)
About David Cameron's fraudulent behaviour:
When David Cameron became an MP, he was supposed to declare certain investments and what have you to the party, he failed to do this vis-a-vis his shares in Blairmore. Now, this is a little bit of a grey area, the rule actually states that 'should the member deem it reasonable', which is a very dodgy thing to ask of people. What is reasonable is subjective, entirely so. Cameron has turned around and said that he believed at the time that there would be no reason for reasonable protest about his investments, and that it was unreasonable to suggest that people would judge him and his dealings as favouring himself and his tax havens.
He has committed fraud in other ways as well. He claims £53,000 per annum back on his expenses for his wife's personal stylist. That's taxpayers money that could be better spent on the NHS or steel industry, that is going -straight- into the gits pocket to pay for his wife's vanity. Not okay.
In Conclusion; yes I -do- think he should resign. No I -don't- think BoJo will be PM. And yes, I am sorry, but you were mistaken a couple of times.
http://www.thecanary.co/category/news-and-politics