Sunday, June 18, 2006

Green with envy

If Sir Philip Green has managed to avoid paying £300m in income tax in 2004/5 by partly living in Monaco, is he still worthy of a knighthood!?!
Posted by at

2 comments:

Tom Paine said...

It's not contributions to the Exchequer that count in that respect, but to the Labour Party!

Green's not guilty of tax evasion though, just of ordering his affairs prudently so as to avoid unnecessary tax. I wouldn't like nice chaps like you to join in the cynical Brownian obfuscation of that critically-important distinction.

If he was too stupid to order his affairs sensibly, then he would never have made any valuable contribution to deserve an honour!

7:26 pm
Anonymous said...

His tax avoidance is only on "his" dividends which go to his wife who owns the shares and is resident in Monaco. If he gets a salary from BHS etc then he pays his full whack of tax + national insurance on it. His wife (as a non-resident) does not pay any extra over and above the tax effectively suffered on the dividend (at 20%). Accordingly, the tax mitigation is on the 20% extra she would have paid had she been resident here.

This is a good deal for the UK taxpayer since BHS would have gone belly-up without Green. Instead BHS pays corporation tax on its profits and its employees pay tax + NI on their wages.

8:01 pm

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)