Dodging questions of course not taxes.
Just adding a little to David’s earlier piece on Margaret Hodge…the more you look the less savoury the view…..one QC saying that Hodge’s and her fellow MP’s comments on the tax affairs of the likes of Amazon, Google and Starbucks is an ‘unprincipled attack on the rule of law’.
Hodge is very protective of her reputation….no problem there for her…the BBC at least won’t be doing any digging and asking any awkward questions.
Fortunately others aren’t so scared of her lawyers or her bluster….or more likely won’t be sitting back and enjoying the spectacle of Hodge attacking ‘Big Business’.
So much for transparency and an open democracy….or the rule of Law which seems to have been replaced by self appointed fingerwaggers who think their opinions should outweigh legal opinion.
She tells us: ‘I am not a hypocrite’ and her work will not be undermined by ‘politicaly motivated smears‘.
Have a look at what Channel 4 reports on her reaction to allegations of tax avoidance by a company run by her brother:
A roasting for Starbucks..but a grilling for Hodge?
“Time and time again I have sought assurances to ensure they do it by the books,” Hodge says.
I have asked him (Ralph her brother who runs the company) more than once.
“I’m a tiny, tiny, tiny shareholder. I’ve done the responsible thing as a shareholder in the company. He has given me 100 per cent reassurance.”
Stemcor has a turnover of something in the order of £6 billion, and has its headquarters in the UK….but ‘In the past 3 years, a total of £14m of corporation tax has been paid by Stemcor in the UK.‘ Though it says it is paying a rate of over 30% worldwide in total.
OK…a tiny tiny shareholder? She holds millions of shares…according to Guido £1.8 million worth….and that this figure “excludes shares held in trust or in her children’s names”….’As Polly Toynbee helpfully explains, this can be used as a clever way of minimising future inheritance tax liability’
Forget Bermuda, Britain’s tax havens are much closer to home
‘It’s easy to point a finger at Amazon and co, but UK-based trusts make it easier than ever for the rich not to pay their share….to avoid “uninvited guests at the sharing out of your estate”. Those “uninvited guests” are the rest of the nation’s taxpayers.
Why any Labour chancellor – or Tory for that matter – lets this dodge persist is a mystery.’
You would think someone, possibly a news organisation that seeks to ‘hold Power to account’ would be asking searching questions of those who claim to hold the rest of us to such high standards as Hodge does.
Only this morning on Today John Humphrys was asking ‘Who guards the Guardians’ (2 hrs 10 mins)..in reference to the police….but just as relevant to anyone in positions of power and influence who seek to lay charges at other’s doors and then issue blame and possible retribution…if only to shame and villify them in public….’It is vital that there is an effective way of calling to account those who wield enormous power if they get things badly wrong or abuse that power.’
And what of Hodge’s claim that ‘Time and time again I have sought assurances…‘……that her brother has reassured her that all is above board and no tax minimising schemes are in place at Stemcor?
Stemcor practises ‘Transfer pricing’….something that Hodge and Co have attacked severely as tax avoidance…but Stemcor, in its own case say……
‘ “Transfer pricing” is not synonymous with “tax avoidance”, Stemcor has nothing to hide and would be happy to provide more detail about its tax affairs to the media if requested. Stemcor’s annual reports for the past five years are available to anyone who requests them via www.stemcor.com.’
That’s OK then.
Fascinating that all it takes is for her brother just to whisper some words of reassurance to her….just a shame Amazon or Starbucks has not employed any of her relatives a cynical comic might suggest.
Is that all she has done to confirm that everything is above reproach? Seek reassurance. It wasn’t such a good way of dealing with things when she was leader of Islington Council was it?
Some people believe Hodge is engaged in a pantomime of political grandstanding of the highest order…one that is aided and abetted by the BBC’s provision of an unquestioning platform from which to broadcast her heady, populist rhetoric….
‘As Tax Journal reported yesterday, David Goldberg QC has described MPs’ recent criticism of multinationals as an ‘unprincipled attack on the rule of law’. The PAC had set up its own standard for HMRC and criticised the department for not achieving that standard, he argued in a letter to The Times. ‘But the standard set up has no basis in fact or in law,’ he wrote, and Hodge had adopted ‘far too broad a conception of tax avoidance’.
However, Hodge’s work has drawn a good deal of popular support, and a leading article in The Times last weekend said Hodge and the PAC ‘deserve plaudits for so influencing the popular mood’.’
Hodge is a Labour MP…member of a Party that was in power for 13 years, a Party that fawned over the Financial markets and businesses as long as they bankrolled their socialist dreams.
Now that dream has gone bust they are looking for someone to blame..and it’s not themselves…..‘Labour tiptoed round the edge of the tax avoidance industry, chased off by City blusterers who called tougher tax collection a Labour stealth tax.‘
As a caller to the Today programme said:
‘If Margaret Hodge doesn’t like the way accountants use the law to save clients tax, then change the law. That’s what’s she’s paid for.’
Exactly…who makes tax laws? The politicians. Margaret Hodge MP is a politician.
What exactly is your record in introducing legislation that tackles the problem of tax avoidance schemes?
Hodge was Labour’s ‘Minister for Industry and the Regions’ 2006-2007….surely she had some thing to say at the time about corporate tax then?
‘Imagine that you are the corporate finance director of one of these companies. Your job is to look at the law as it stands….It is not to say, “this looks pretty bad, we had better write a huge cheque to the government ex-gratia and show that we are good citizens”.’ So says Boris Johnson
The BBC’s Andrew Marr has other ideas:
Marr asked: ‘Offering up a bit of money for a headline, how would you regard that – intolerable or unacceptable?’
So tax minimising….the choice is….bad or badder….guess the BBC know what to think.
And let’s look back in anger ourselves at one of Hodges Dodges…..her refusal to take responsibilty…her attempts to smear a man (in a private letter to the BBC…an attempt to manipulate their coverage?) who had genuine claims that he was abused in an Islington care home…her attempts to silence all criticism:
‘All right-thinking people like to imagine, when hearing stories of the maltreatment of children, that they themselves would guarantee sanctuary. But often they simply don’t. A senior social worker, Liz Davies, and her manager, David Cofie, first told Margaret Hodge, then leader of Islington council, in 1990 of their suspicions that there was widespread sexual abuse of children in Islington care homes.
Ms Hodge instead believed senior officials who assured her that nothing was the matter. In 1992, the London Evening Standard published extensive evidence of the abuse, which Ms Hodge denounced as “a sensationalist piece of gutter journalism”. In 1995, an independent report found that the council had indeed failed to investigate the allegations properly.
In 2003, Tony Blair appointed Ms Hodge the first ever Minister for Children. Some questioned her suitability, including a courageous and articulate man called Demetrious Panton who had been sexually abused in an Islington care home in the late 1970s and whose attempts to expose what was happening had been repeatedly ignored.
Ms Hodge wrote privately to the BBC describing Mr Panton as “extremely disturbed”, a remark for which she was later compelled to apologise in the High Court.’
Not a woman who takes criticism lightly or accepts blame readily.
No doubt the way life is, some people are due for a fall from grace…and then perhaps the BBC will do its job and start asking interesting questions.
Ms Hodge typifies all that is wrong with the labour party, socialism and parliament. She’s a public disgrace and fits in well with the rest of the miscreants with whom she mingles.
I guess nobody saw dez’s comment about this in the last thread.
Margaret Hodge MP – apology
Margaret Hodge MP – Contrary to our report “Hodge faces challenge over family firm’s taxes” (Nov 20), Stemcor, in which Ms Hodge has a small shareholding, has not abused transfer pricing to avoid tax. We accept that there is no inconsistency or hypocrisy in Ms Hodge criticising other companies for tax avoidance and apologise to her for any contrary impression.
We know the Telegraph apologised hence the careful language used here….something I expected you to pick up if you’d read it as carefully as it was written.
Don’t criticise the post apparently on the basis of the title alone….as it refers to Hodge’s dodging responsibility for enacting tax laws as an MP and for avoiding other responsibilities as council leader..not to dodging taxes…as the first line made clear.
Is there a definitive legal verdict on Stemcor other than its own reassurances that it plays by the rules?
Not sure £1.8 million is a small share holding…never mind other shares held in family trust.
Lots of questions still but no real answers.
And that’s the point….should we just accept Hodge’s own assurances or does the BBC do its job and investigate any claims of a conflict of interest….especially in such a high profile and influential position that Hodge occupies.
The post does not say that Hodge avoids tax…but the question needs to be asked as doubts have surfaced in public…and it hasn’t been by the BBC, they studiously avoid the subject….any doubts should be cleared up in public.
The post is asking….why has the BBC not investigated claims of a conflict of interest? and why has the BBC not challenged Hodge on her record in government…..why did Labour not deal with this issue in 13 years of government? She was after all herself a Minister for Industry.
According to Harriet Harman, legalities are of a lesser concern – it’s the court of public opinion that is paramount.
…but even then I’m sure it’s one rule for them…
‘should we just accept Hode’s own assurances or does the BBC do its job and investigate any claims of a conflict of interest
I believe the expression often used is ‘holding the powerful to account’, and is used… and often abused often by even the most highly professional and uniquely funded media champions in the land. Entire slates do not get sanitised by the hounds licking one face (of many) immune.
A fact that seems to have escaped (see what I did there?) a very desperate Flokker, perhaps due to that nasty head cold.
No matter how carefully the post was written, it should have mentioned the Telegraph apology outright. Much of the post is concerned with the tax issue which the Telegraph decided was not a problem after all. The accusation of hypocrisy was the centerpiece of the previous discussion about this, which seems to have been undermined by the Telegraph’s apology, yet the post went on again about hypocrisy.
I’d want to see the Telegraph’s position’s debunked before declaring that the BBC needs to investigate Hodge anyway because “doubts have surfaced in public”. Otherwise it’s just fodder for defenders of the indefensible, and helps them avoid dealing with the big picture.
“The post does not say that Hodge avoids tax…”
What is the primary purpose for putting company shares into trust?
Probably worth posting this link from Guido:
http://order-order.com/2012/12/13/why-guido-wont-be-apologising-to-hodge-the-dodge/
That`s case closed then…if Dez is satisfied with that, then who wouldn`t be?
Maybe Dez can provide us with the link about Hodges smearing of a boy in one of her care homes…a fantasist who was not abused type of thing.
I`ve left it vague so our favourite blunt-nosed truffle hound can dig and dig …and find Maggie Hodge not guilty because the lads filofax was not arranged to Eu Directive standards or what have you.
I’ll repeat that the Telegraph had to aplogise over Hode:
http://www.taxjournal.com/tj/articles/telegraph-apologises-margaret-hodge-over-stemcor%E2%80%99s-tax-affairs-13122012
Amazing how utterly ill informed Alan is. Or just biased.
We don’t need you to repeat what is plainly written above colditz, we can read.
And I will repeat that the telegraph has apologised over one article only – there are plenty of other articles on the same subject by the same newspaper discussing Hodge’s hypocrisies which the newspaper clearly stands by. Uninformed ? You will be if the BBC and the Labour party spinners have anything to do with it. Or is that just bias on their part ?
It’s a pathetic smear. Pity research is so beyond BBBC!
Islington Childrens Homes Colditz?
Since when has the truth amounted to a smear, Colditz ?
Hodge has admitted to a multi-million pound shareholding with a company which avoids tax in the UK (it pays 0.01% UK tax) – tax avoidance from which she benefits in the form of dividends. Further, she is known to use financial vehicles so that she and her family can further avoid taxes now and in the future. Now, no-one is saying that she is doing anything illegal by so doing. So where’s the smear ?
She actively pursues tax avoidance measures for herself and her family. However, anyone who behaves like that, and then turns round and castigates any other company, its shareholders or officers, or individuals for doing the same thing, is obviously a hypocrite. So where’s the smear again ?
But you’re partly right, it is a real shame the BBC is incapable of any real investigation (you had one too many B’s in BBC, so I’ve corrected that for you, This organisation, just the other day, without any evidence at the time, or any qualification of their reporting, headlined and ran almost incessantly with the Syrian regime’s claims that Israel had bombed a weapons establishment in Syria. It ran almost incessantly for two days headlining the Andrew Mitchell story, accepting totally the version being spun by some in the police at that time…these and so many other campaigns with an almost equal dearth of any real evidence, it runs against those it dislikes. But when numerous stories, un-retracted and with clear foundation, appear in the media about Margaret Hodge – silence. And that’s the real hypocrisy in this.
… and transfer pricing to reduce a tax bill is morally wrong while putting *your* shares in a trust for your children to reduce a tax bill is morally right because ….>
Any lurkers, trolls, droids help me out with this one please.
Not only is she a hypocrite, she’s a vile hypocrite.
It’s called “chutzpa”.
The canteen lawyers at the BBC have partially succeeded, it seems, in diverting the attention of other commenters from Lady Hodge’s real hypocrisy here.
Her hypocrisy does not lie in her owning – or rather benefiting – from shares in Stemcor (Stemcor AFAIAA does not go in for “aggressive” tax avoidance). The hypocrisy is that Lady Hodge benefits from a trust set up by her late father through which she – or rather his estate – avoided IHT. What Mr Oppenheimer (no relation to the South African family of the same name) did was quite legitimate and preserved Stemcor under family control and avoided IHT. The question no-one at the BBC (or, to be fair anywhere else in the MSM) asks is why she doesn’t repay that tax (with interest) if she’s so concerned about tax avoidance. The Telegraph was stupid and ill-informed (hence the very restricted apology) to accuse Stemcor – and by implication Lady Hodge – of anything.
The concern here should be the willingness of the “Conservatives” to join in the demonisation of those obeying the letter (if not the “spirit” of the law). Frankly, as far as tax law is concerned, there is no “spirit”: the law is written down – copiously – in thousands of pages of Butterworth’s Tax series. If the politicians wanted to they could simplify much of the tax legislation tomorrow and get rid of much “aggressive” tax avoidance at the same time. The interesting thing is why they don’t but that’s a topic which I have never heard raised – let alone discussed – on the BBC.
Great post. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Extremely useful info particularly the ultimate part 🙂 I deal with such information a lot. I used to be looking for this certain info for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.