king_pellinor: (Default)
king_pellinor ([personal profile] king_pellinor) wrote2012-07-27 03:31 pm

More tax silliness

Guido Fawkes this time:

http://order-order.com/2012/07/23/david-gaukes-wife-is-tax-avoidance-lawyer/

Hold on a minute, she works for Lexis Nexis.  They publish law reports and so on - so she's not actually advising anyone at all.  Her profile says she used to advise on restructurings and other transactions, nearly all of which will consist of simply trying to work out how to avoid doing something silly, and the rest of which will be explaining to the client why they should keep things nice and simple.  It's very easy to generate a tax charge that even HMRC would admit shouldn't be there (not that this would stop them taking the money), if you're not careful.

Is Fawkes just assuming that anyone involved in tax law is all about the avoidance?  If so his world view is very... simplistic :-D

Actually, my respect for Gauke has now gone up marginally.  If he has someone from Lexis Nexis around then he should have a bit more awareness of what a mess tax law is than I'd given him credit for :-)

[identity profile] tovaglia.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 12:36 pm (UTC)(link)
The name Lexis Nexis sounds like something out of Harry Potter :)

[identity profile] king-pellinor.livejournal.com 2012-07-29 06:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I always think it's quite SF :-)