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I remember McDonnell publishing his now, obviously caused less of a ripple at the time. I assume all of the expenses must be dealt with outside of the salary, etc and just recharged.
In theory the shareholding didn't need to be declared on the HoP register, according to the rules it's only shareholdings over £70k http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmcode/1076/107604.htm Paragraph 51.
Part of the trouble with this story and the ability for one side to claim it's a huge issue and the other to claim it's blown out of proportion is the crap reporting.
It doesn't sell newspapers sadly but a bit less conflating tax avoidance with evasion, leaping into headlines whether knowing the rules, etc would make it a bit easier to understand and work out what the problems are.
It's similar to the pig episode where the newspapers all concentrated on the pig (entertaining admittedly) but virtually ignored the Lord Ashcroft non-dom status issue.
aggi-
In theory the shareholding didn't need to be declared on the HoP register, according to the rules it's only shareholdings over £70k publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmcode/1076/107604.htm Paragraph 51.
Read 55.
Any relevant financial interest or material benefit which does not clearly fall into one of the other categories, including any shareholding which falls below the relevant threshold, or any other financial asset, including an asset held in trust, if the Member nevertheless considers that it meets the test of relevance; in other words, that it might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions or words as a Member...
It was relevant enough that he sold it when he became PM, but not relevant enough that he declared it while an MP.
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I remember McDonnell publishing his now, obviously caused less of a ripple at the time. I assume all of the expenses must be dealt with outside of the salary, etc and just recharged.
Expenses do not form part of taxable income as they're repaying the MP for things they have already paid for out of their previously taxed pay.
Whether or not the item they've bought should be refunded by the Government is a separate matter. Like the tax avoidance issue, there are plenty of shades of grey as expenses cover a broad range of items:-
- stationery and stamps used to communicate with their constituents
- rent for office space, salaries for secretarial staff
- mortgage interest or rent for London properties for non-London based MPs
- The latest 55" 4K TVs for non-London based MPs London flats/houses so that they are able to "watch the news"
- duck houses (with or without moats), etc
There are ways to scam loads of these things though:-
- buying things at vastly inflated prices from a friend's business (and then getting favours or cash in return)
- employing family/friends and either paying them over the odds or even for not working at all
- renting properties off family/friends at inflated prices
- getting electricity bills expensed but forgetting that the bill also includes one's stables
- expensing wholly unnecessary items (duck houses, etc)
I seem to remember reading an article a few years ago about how Central Purchasing within the HoP was a joke. They'd pay £100 for a box of 2500 sheets of paper because they'd buy one box and have it couriered to the HoP because they needed it RightNow(TM).
- stationery and stamps used to communicate with their constituents
Greenbank
Not really, unless I'm mistaken he hasn't avoided any tax (yet).
He sold some shares which just happened to be held offshore, but he brought the proceeds back into the UK and declared the capital gain on his tax return. It's just it was below the CGT threshold so no tax needed to be paid. This isn't tax avoidance.
He received a gift of 200k from his mum. This isn't tax avoidance either. No tax is due on that unless she dies within 7 years of making that gift (at which point IHT will be liable).
Far more important are:
[EDIT - gah, hit the button too early]
But the biggest one is that at some point he will inherit a huge chunk of money some of which seems to have been built up using various offshore tax avoidance schemes. He'll try and distance himself from this by claiming that he's not responsible for how his parents managed their affairs but if he tries to minimise the IHT impact he'll be pilloried. Then again, he probably won't be PM by then anyway, and no-one will care anywhere near as much.