The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, has had – how do we say – not a particularly great week. The Panama papers revealed that he had an offshore bank account managed by embattled firm Mossack Fonseca, inherited from his father. Protesters ignored his claim that he had sold it and paid appropriate tax, and demanded a resignation.
He said, in reference to his astoundingly bad week:
“It has not been a great week. I know that I should have handled this better, I could have handled this better. I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them. Don’t blame No 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers, blame me.”
To placate the uprising, he has taken the largely unprecedented step of releasing his tax records for the public’s perusal. But it looks like that’s just gotten him in deeper shit: the records reveal that his mother put £100,000 into his accounts in 2011, allowing the family estate to avoid paying £80,000 in inheritance taxes.
Not a great look when the reason he released the tax papers in the first place was to prove that he and his family were paying what they owe.
Tax minimisation strategies are a reality – people with stacks of cash will always work to cut down the tax they pay through loopholes, exemptions and dark wizardry.
The issue that many British citizens have is that their elected leader – who is currently establishing a task force to investigate the legality of many offshore account arrangements and ostensibly wants to crack down on tax avoidance – has allegedly been enabling the very same thing.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Getty Images / WPA Pool.
