The Pandora Papers

[NeverEnough]

I don’t know if anyone has been following this story but i’m finding it quite confusing.

Pandora Papers: The secret owners of UK property worth billions

Foreign politicians and people accused of corruption have bought homes through offshore firms.

www.bbc.co.uk

Surely it’s been a Saville style “open secret” for years that rich foreign interests have been buying up large swathes of London. And that these “interests” didn’t become immensely rich by selling Vegan Sweetcakes at a Bring and Buy sale. Indeed hasn’t it been at best blind eyed and at worst encouraged by successive administrations on the grounds that London in a cosmopolitan city and this brings inward investment (to any already immensely rich area).

I’m finding the outrage to be very, shall we say, retrospective.

 

[Purplepot]

It’s more than that it’s outright theft

 

[Blackdog]

Fancy Tony Blair being mentioned.

 

[justbeingnosy98]

Agreed - it’s well known that huge amounts of London are owned by v wealthy foreigners. A lot of landed estates around the UK are also owned

The Tory Govt know this and they know that raising taxes will cause a huge huge outflow of foreign capital from the UK. In the run up to the last general election there was a lot of contingency planning in case Labour won and immediately hiked taxes.

The Tony Blair thing annoyed me. (I am a tax advisor for reference ) He didn’t have to pay stamp duty because he purchased a company that owned a property. Which means you don’t need to pay stamp duty but the company does need to pay an ATED charge on the property every year. In 5 years-ish the company would likely have paid more in ATED than the one off stamp duty charge.