Over 3,000 BBC staff are using tax avoidance schemes.
You might think that this would be of great interest to a news organisation which has set itself the task to root out corrupt and ‘immoral’ practices in politics, banking and , er, other media companies.
You would be wrong.
As the Daily mail points out when given the chance to talk to the chairman of the public accounts committee they dodged it…..
On Monday, Newsnight, introduced by Kirsty Wark, should have devoted an item to BBC chief Zarin Patel’s gripping testimony to the Commons public accounts committee. Guess what? They found much else to talk about.
Amazingly, Margaret Hodge, chairman of the public accounts committee to which Miss Patel had given evidence earlier in the day, was invited to talk about the London Olympics. Tax avoidance by BBC presenters was not once mentioned. It is a subject far too close to home ever to be discussed on the BBC.
The pure hypocrisy of the Left, exposed again. Their greed is worse than the capitalists they despise – who at least create wealth and jobs. The Beeboids see themselves as the socialist elite, the ones who have a right to be at the top of The Party hierarchy, Animal Farm-style, feeding off the hard work of others.
No more crony capitalism – privatise the beeb!
If Jimmy Carr calls himself a comedian, he should be sued under the trades description act for misleading information. Comedians are supposed to be funny he is not.
Animal Farm, 1984, it is amazing how the rise of
I(slingto)ngSoc was forseen.
I wonder how many BBC news staff have conducted aggressive interviews in which they posed questions about the immorality of avoiding tax in these times of austerity, knowing full well that they were engaged in these very practices themselves. Those who are in the privileged position of holding people to account ought to be openly free of the vices they seek out in others. This is the type of hypocrisy that rightly caused the Major government and it’s ‘back to basics’ campaign so many problems.
To the BBC,
I am writing with regards to our TV license.
In your letters you state that it is against the’LAW’ to not have a TV license.could you tell us under (COMMON LAW) which law that is?
The license is authorized under a (ACT OF PARLIAMENT) called a ‘STATUTE’ a statute is not a LAW it is just an ACT therefore you stating in your letters that it is against the LAW not to have a TV license is misleading ie: (DECEPTION) there for i request you refund our license fee for the last 6years.
Message to the BBC – When you live in a glass house you should not throw stones.
I’ve thought this before and I dare say I will think it again, ‘Who will be the first person to throw the first brick through the first window?’ I wonder if the thought police will be looking for me soon.
Same goes for the Olympics.
Our useless Tory ministers will avail themselves of those “Zil Lanes”, should they be unable to use that Oystercard of theirs.
Yet these self-serving nomarks will wail at equally-useless unions planning to go on strike during this drug/cheat fest…as if they`re somehow “betraying” the “Olympic family”.
About the only “family” still supported or rated by the State, so it seems…how stupid do we have to be to go along with all this.
Ditto with the sale of Lloyds banks today-when assets of public companies were sold off cheap to the private sector way back, that was “asset-stripping”…but if the recipients are the Israel-hating Co-op, well that`s got to be a good thing…as Peston seemed to agree with, this morning on Today.
And the term “Ethical Bank” was used so many times. What the f*** is ethical about a bank, particularly one connected to an anti-Israel (read anti-Jew) business???
Amazing that the same people who complain about banks getting too big are happy for the “Co-operative” Bank to do just that. Hypocrites-r-us.
Yes, the co-op bank is where RBS were six or seven years ago.
‘Ooh look at all these wonderful opportunities to expand our business.’
What probably angers and frustrates me most about this sort of thing with our diabolically ever self righteous and truly putridly hypocritical leftie state broadcaster is never even seeing other broadcasters get stuck in to investigating and reporting on law-unto-itself Al-Beeb’s endless dodgy ways, presumably because of the bastard unions and things like channels often using bits of footage (especially for news) of each others. It’s as if it’s a special fuckin club!, where competion between broadcasters only dares goes so far and no further. Other broadcasters could fill their news and make epic documentaries reporting on all of Al-Beeb’s questionable antics, and yet they just don’t go there, do they?.. You could hardly get a bigger elephant in the room, but they just don’t go there. Out of bounds.
Makes me sick.
There is no real competition between the mainstream media. You are right in saying it’s a club. It is, and you and me are not in it.
The mainstream media is the PR window for a political agenda that the whole of the mainstream media supports. some of them report from the left, some from the right, but they all agree to avoid any critical analysis of the agenda itself.
This is why they all tell the same lies. Support all the same wars, rarely, if ever question the climate change agenda, all push the false idea that there is any significant difference between labour, conservative and liberal policies.
For the last 40 years this country, and this world, has been going in the same direction, regardless of who has been in power in Number 10, or in the Whitehouse.
As the late great George Carlin said, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
It is why they are tossing a few scraps here and there in the banking crisis. They know that more and more of us know that there is a problem with banking, so this is a limited hang out…
The mainstream media are all over the “bad bankers” and everyone hates Bob Diamond, but the media keep the investigations strictly to the retail and investment banking sector. How often do you hear any mention of the actual evil of central banking or their hub, the “BIS, Bank of International Settlements in Basel Switzerland?
Google for “I want the world + 5%”
The problem in the global economy is actually central banking’s fractional reserve banking of fiat currencies. The entire global monitory system is inherently corrupt, and is the world’s biggest scam.
When you have a system whereby the central bankers have the power to create money out of thin air to lend into circulation at interest, but the interest is NEVER created, then that system is inflationary by design and the wilful creation of poverty is designed into the system.
By way of grossly simplified explanation:
If I create 1 million loans of 10 ‘units of currency’ to people, and expect them all to repay 11 ‘units of currency’ each in one year, But I only create the 10 million ‘units of currency’… How on earth can they all repay 11 ‘units of currency’? It would be impossible. There is not enough ‘units of currency’ in the system to repay everything that is owed.
This system will require many of these people to re-borrow to pay off the original loan. This creates more interest bearing debt (again without the interest being created at all) and feeds an inflationary spiral.
It is a system designed from the outset to create poverty. This is why we are always running round like headless chickens trying to find money and there never seems to be enough.
When the central bankers want to go fishing for tangible assets, they cast out their nets, which means that they make credit cheap and create and issue lots of loans and the system appears to be awash with money. We get an economic boom and some people become very very wealthy.
When the bankers then want to collect their catch, they stop issuing loans, and due to the fact that the money required to pay interest owing, has never ever been created, the bankers then wait for the mathematics to come into play. People have to repay their loans, plus interest, but the banks are not lending the increased amounts required to repay that interest. People default and anything they put up as security is taken into the possession of the banks. And it cost the central bankers NOTHING because they created the money out of thin air in the first place.
This is plain and simply wrong. For a start it confuses credit creation via fractional reserve banks with money creation by central banks. The whole interest argument is false too – the interest paid on a loan is then used to pay the depositor and to cover the bank’s expected loss on default. The central bank is constantly dripping new money into the economy via its open market operations. I could go on but I do not want to hijack this thread.
the thing with Labour/Democrat politicians and left wing celebs, they are using our money for their advantage
Yes, just like with the completely undemocratically choiceless Al-Beeb TV Licence fees off us, it’s all basically daylight fuckin robbery!
As for “celebs”, well, no sooner are they celebs than most depart the real world and suddenly talk shite! – “Labour/Democrat politicians” are rarely in it in the first place! Usually can’t see the wood for the trees but still delusionally think they’re visionaries, like calamity Gordon Clown did and absolutely no doubt still does, even though the traitorous mass social engineering mental bastard should be in prison!
I never mind a rant, but it always disappoints me a bit when posters start using swear words. Never adds, only detracts. cf Brigstocke, Jupitus, Carr et al,… when the patter is flagging and the audience is turning off out they come with the C word and the F word (but never the igger word) for the guaranteed and very cheap laugh .
You’re better than them, mate.
Anyhoo, back to topic…
perhaps Red White and Dez or David Gregory could comment here on
a) whether it’s *moral* that the BBC and, say, Jeremy Paxman can avoid tax by pretending that Jeremy, who has been on the payroll for some 40 years is not actually an ’employee’ and
b) whether it’s anything other than rank hypocrisy for ‘freelancers’ like Cakkle With Nikki and Paxman to host programmes which on occasion pillory individuals and companies who avoid tax.
(I see that @LooooocyUKUncut has defriended Gameshow Nikki on Facebook. Always a tragedy when you discover your idols have feet of clay).
Anyway over to Dez ‘n’ Dave. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough. Not holding my breath.
As a point of information the use of personal service companies is NOT an income tax avoidance arrangement*. Use of PSCs avoids payment of National Insurance contributions because owners of PSCs pay themselves by dividend (which are not subject to an NI surcharge) rather than by director’s fees (which are). This whole nonsense could be forgotten if NI was melded into the “normal” tax system. Of course, if that happened a shedload of public “servants” would become redundant immediately so, obviously, it won’t happen.
Coming to the BBC: no BBC “journalist” that I have heard/read/seen has explained at all – let alone accurately – why it might be advantageous to use PSCs. The advantages for free-lancers also extend elsewhere and make their lives – and the lives of the organisations they work for – rather less complicated. This is straightforward information which could be conveyed without spin and which the BBC should be able to inform its audience about. Again, there might be this kind of info somewhere on the BBC website but life’s too short to keep at the sh*te BBC search engine.
By the way, the BBC was defending the use of PSCs to Margaret Hodge chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee. Why does Ms Hodge get a free pass from the tax “justice” lynch mob beloved of Newsnight for benefiting from the trust arrangements set up by her father? These arrangements (which, I suspect, avoided massive inheritance tax) have allowed her not only to live a life of unearned ease but to indulge herself in the inherited hypocrisy of champagne socialism (cf Polly Toynbee, Antonia Fraser, the Benns). This particular form of hypocrisy is apparently exempt from criticism by the BBC and the Guardian.
Anyway, back to PSCs: as a way of tackling NI avoidance through PSCs, the financial genius Gordon Brown, instead of simplifying the tax system (a short paragraph in the Finance Act would have been – and still is – sufficient), chose to impose the “IR35” regulations. These regulations were supposed to prevent NI avoidance but – because of the usual cock-up culture at the Treasury/HMRC and total ignorance on the part of Brown and Balls – IR35, although complicated and diverting a fair amount of the manpower of HMRC, was and is dead in the water and has failed in its primary purpose. To be fair, that other financial genius – George “share the proceeds of growth” Osborne – also shows no sign of common sense (or any sense except one of entitlement) in general and in particular concerning PSCs.
There’s a scandal here alright: the scandal is that, instead of informing its audience concerning the how and whys of PSCs, the BBC obfuscates what is a simple matter in order, I guess, to encourage the anti-business miasma which is part of the Narrative.
*in practice a small amount of income tax is also avoided but, without the NI avoidance, there’d be no tax reason to form a PSC.
I hope Fox news and commentators are going after the BBC’s tax dodgers.
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