It's all very well saying the Government should close the loopholes but if they do then a lot of the people who fund them (the individual political parties, that is) will be mightily upset.

Plus we currently have front benches filled with people who are multi-millionaires and there's no way they want to screw things up for their own futures.

Indeed, but in which case he should have STHU and kept his thoughts to himself.

Nothing I hate more than hypocrites and this is the biggest example of it I have seen in a while, for exactly the reasons you suggest Tim.

Perhaps Jimmy Carr isn't one of his fans so he spoke first, thought later?

If you are lucky enough to be earning enough to afford an accountant to set you up such an account then why not? The loop holes are there so tax advisers have a job!
There's nothing wrong with what he's done, and please don't tell me that if someone gave any of us the chance to pay less tax we wouldn't.

My other gripe is that alot of tax money is pissed away, until the government starts sorting itself out and doing what in my opinion is the right thing then i'm all for not gifting the government money for the hell of it.

Whilst maybe not as relevant now as it was then, it is interesting to read Jackie Stewart's view on his move to Switzerland. At the time the top rate of tax in the UK was 93%, he figured he had at most 5 years in which he could earn good money (if he lived that long) so to provide for his family for the long term it made a lot of sense to move to Switzerland and be able to keep more than 7% of his earnings (his £1m income would have provided just £70k).

I'm not necessarily saying this is the right thing to do, but if you have a well paid job which means you can live anywhere, why not choose somewhere nice where you don't have to pay much tax.

Yes it is. The government gets £999,930 and you get £70k. You'd have to be a total cretin to accept that is fair. Although in his day the money would not have been used to provide 16 year old single mums with Mcaren buggies, Nike trainers, fags, booze and iPhones.

To make my stance clear, if I drop the big one on the lotto, I'll be posting from somewhere warm and exotic with an advantageous (to me) taxation system. I'll believe everyone should make a fair contribution when everyone is making a fair contribution.

That would be a tax rate of 99.993%, and would leave you with £70, not £70k. Maybe you should master the basics of maths before you try to take on tax reform

come on i think everybody on here would pay less tax if they could...Cameron knows this because most of his mate are doing this with the K2 scheme that's why he has shut his mouth... the rich get richer and to poor get had over...

OK, I'll stick by head above the parapet on this one and say that if I were to suddently come into a massive pile of cash, or develop some marketable skill that paid me £3Mill a year, I would have no problem in paying the due rate of tax without resorting to these dishonest tax evasion scams.

All this crap about "we'd do the same in their position" is just a lie peddaled by the cheats and their apologists to make it all seem OK.

Perhaps the better question to those emplying these techniques should be turned on it's head.
"If they lost all their wedge, would they use the NHS, or claim benefits, or send their kids to the local state school?"
Of course they would, and they are paid for by guess what, the rest of us handing over our wedge every month.

There are huge parts of government spending that we can all disagree with, but we as a nation employ a government to make those calls, and if we disagree, we can bin them and elect another lot.

Point, missed, entirely.

Carr was NOT using a tax evasion scheme and none of the ridiculous furore is about tax evasion schemes. What they are talking about is tax avoidance, perfectly legal and done every day by millions of self-employed people albeit in miniature. Saving your VAT petrol receipts? Claiming relief for capital investment? Keeping a total of your outlays? All required to be done to avoid tax payable on your gross income.

Tax avoidance schemes like the K2 are not dishonest , they are completely legal and must be declared to HMRC before they can take effect. The government created the rules in which schemes like that can exist so they cannot complain about them.

If they want , they can legislate to prevent them but for Cameron to turn round and castigate someone for acting in an entirely legal manner in this country is absolutely beyond the pale, particularly when his family have profited from what certainly appears to be tax evasion schemes in another country.

I am not here to defend Cameron, or any other politiician, or indeed the rank hypocricy of Jimmy Carr.

There is a world of difference between recaliming your expenses/vat reciepts etc to sacking yourself from the company you own, paying the money owing to a wheeze-co offshore, then them paying you back the minimum wage and lending you the rest with no intention to pay it back. It is totally indefensible.

HMRC CAN object in retrospect, if they are being used in a manner which they were not intended.

To a great many people , so is owning a car like the Fiat Coupe, driving fast, using up resources and killing our planet, they would call it morally reprehensible and repugnant but it remains entirely legal and judging by your membership here, completely defensible to you.

Law and morals do not meet, the law on tax currently says that what Carr did is entirely legal and therefore defensible.

With an 11+, maths O level, HNC (obtained before they became 11+ standard) and a calculus unit at OU, you'd think I'd have got that right. Sorry if I credited subsidies to 2 extra 16 year old unmarried mums and the odd workshy junkie.

BTW I've no intention of reforming the tax system. My post said, given enough money I wouldn't be paying any tax in UK.

You have this view because you haven't been in that situation. If you won it you'd feel lucky to be in that position. Some people are in that position because they have the skills or made sacrifices to get there. If you were that person you may feel very different. You can only see it from your point of view based on your experience of life so far.

Imagine you had worked very hard for 10 years to build up a successful export company. You employ 50 people and effectively keep nearly 200 men, women and children to a good standard of living. The company pays a huge amount of PAYE and National Insurance and corporation tax to the government and there are no ill effects on the UK economy. BUT you continue to work very hard to keep the company in the state it is and you feel you can't do it for another 10 years. Why shouldn't you take any LEGAL advantage you can to ensure you provide for yourself and your family in the future? If you can answer that with a simple 'Well I wouldn't' then you simply can't comprehend the situation.

If that person above lost it all, 9 times out of 10 they would start all over again and earn it. I've seen it quite a few times They wouldn't take hand-outs

I'm afraid yours is a very blinkered (but quite normal) view

As I and others have noted above, all these schemes are notified to HMRC in black and white. They even tell HMRC how they work! HMRC will also always object and come to a compromise.

I moved to Dubai and yet I still haven't escaped the UK and its rediculous tax.

Council Tax- I no longer live in the UK, I'm a resident of another country and yet I still have to pay council tax on my property in the UK, how the hell does that work?
There is a one person living in the house so sensibly I applied for single occupancy on the property, this was rejected as "the house is still my main residence" according to West Oxfordshire District Council. I have sent them my new home address details here in Dubai and explained how this is my new home for the foreseeable future but they won't budge, they are still charging the full amount?

I asked when West Oxfordshire Distric Council were coming to empty my bins or when the police would be doing their rounds but they couldn't answer those questions.

My father in law moved to the UAE for the same reasons, the £250k he earns goes in his pocket and no one else's. If he needs the hospital he is prepared to pay, he offered to move us out and pay for schools - I've found I could earn £100k as an accountant - so I'm seriously thinking about it.

This is all mainly down to the stupid rules set out by our government and the idiots in Europe. I do all I can to negate paying tax and will continue to do so.

Muzzie, Medical cover is paid for by the company you work for, the same system that works well in America, plenty of British doctors over here too.

I wouldn't hesitate, if you can tolerate the 4 months of 40+ deg the rest of the year is lovely and things are picking up nicely after the mass exodus in 2008.

*Arnold Schwartzenegger voice on*

Do it, Do it now!

I'd hate to see a system that works badly.

Take a wander into some of the poorer performing NHS hospitals.

Any hospital would have to be performing pretty badly to make it as terrible as the American system, where 20% of the population have no health cover at all.

But, back on topic - having your employer pay for your health care is just another tax, it just doesn't appear as tax on your pay slip. Whichever way you slice the cake health care has to be paid for and working people have to pay for it.

So, expensive, exclusive, bad for business (a few years ago I saw General Motors described as "A health-care provider, with a sideline in manufacturing cars") and it doesn't even do a good job of saving lives.

Clearly a much better system than taxation, eh?

Thanks Neil!

Is there even much you can do as a person directly employed?

You need to go to the effort of setting yourself up as a company and becoming an employee no?

Are you talking about contracting? There are various ways of saving tax and National Insurance if you become a contractor, but as with everything in life, there are risks too.

Yes contracting effectively.

An employee earning £40K a year would receive £29,700 in his pocket per annum.

Making a few assumptions, if this employee moving to being a contractor earning the same (but also taking some of the employer saving by engaging a contractor (half the employers NI of £2,000), then the contractor would receive around £37,000 in his pocket per annum.

Hence why there are so many contractors...

So for £7,300 you'd be selling your right to paid holiday and sick leave, getting shot of any job security, losing out on any pension and risking an enormous shafting from HMRC if they spot your 'company' has only one employee and one client.

Sounds like a great deal.