How advisers to stars lobbied MPs to make it a human right to avoid tax (in UK)
Poor Jimmy Carr. If the comedian who likes to joke that he is "literally the biggest face in television" had not been so famous he would not be making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
And if a promoter of K2, one of the tax avoidance schemes Carr had signed up to, had not boasted about the comic's involvement to undercover reporters, his financial affairs, and those of many others, would have remained secret.
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Romangate was part of a tax avoidance strategy called Rushmore that was closed down in 2009 without any financial benefit to its members amid claims in parliament that it could end up depriving the Exchequer of £200m. Introducing legislation to close the scheme down, the Labour Treasury secretary, Stephen Timms, explained: "We are preventing exploitation of the tax system by the schemes of a small number of wealthy people. Honest taxpayers rightly expect the government to identify such schemes quickly and block them effectively."
The diverse backgrounds of those who sought to benefit from the strategy suggests tax avoidance trusts are not simply vehicles for the super-rich. Romangate, which is owned by a Jersey trust called Plectron, is just one of a range of companies founded by financial consultants Matthew Jenner and Anthony Mehigan to help a multitude of clients avoid tax.
full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/23/jimmy-carr-tax-avoidance
