Trump guilty

[Sundayjumper]

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2 ... at-i-found#

I have to admit, I didn’t realise a married couple may only have ONE main residence between them. It’s obvious enough if they live together in one place and have a holiday home in another, but although it’s not clear in that article it sounds as though she was routinely living in the property in question ?

Approaching it completely cold (and wrong, as it turns out), if you’re the sole owner of a property and you spend the majority of your time living there, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume it is your main residence. The problem is, in fact, being married ! If they weren’t married it would have been OK.

(edit to add I have a vague recollection of one of the tests being which address you have official mail delivered to, bank statements etc which she may also fall foul of even if not married)

Bottom line, it may or may not have been fraud, she should have got some advice, and it’s £3.5k that might not even be enforceable anyway ? Pfft.

I am NOT a Labour supporter in any way but this does all seem a bit desperate.

[Rich B]

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2 ... at-i-found#

I have to admit, I didn’t realise a married couple may only have ONE main residence between them. It’s obvious enough if they live together in one place and have a holiday home in another, but although it’s not clear in that article it sounds as though she was routinely living in the property in question ?

Approaching it completely cold (and wrong, as it turns out), if you’re the sole owner of a property and you spend the majority of your time living there, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume it is your main residence. The problem is, in fact, being married ! If they weren’t married it would have been OK.

(edit to add I have a vague recollection of one of the tests being which address you have official mail delivered to, bank statements etc which she may also fall foul of even if not married)

Bottom line, it may or may not have been fraud, she should have got some advice, and it’s £3.5k that might not even be enforceable anyway ? Pfft.

I am NOT a Labour supporter in any way but this does all seem a bit desperate.

nah, it's worse than Trump!!

(If you're heavily biased against the left).

[Sundayjumper]

nah, it's worse than Trump!!

Speaking of whom, and getting back on topic....

[ZedLeg]

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2 ... at-i-found#

I have to admit, I didn’t realise a married couple may only have ONE main residence between them. It’s obvious enough if they live together in one place and have a holiday home in another, but although it’s not clear in that article it sounds as though she was routinely living in the property in question ?

Approaching it completely cold (and wrong, as it turns out), if you’re the sole owner of a property and you spend the majority of your time living there, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume it is your main residence. The problem is, in fact, being married ! If they weren’t married it would have been OK.

(edit to add I have a vague recollection of one of the tests being which address you have official mail delivered to, bank statements etc which she may also fall foul of even if not married)

Bottom line, it may or may not have been fraud, she should have got some advice, and it’s £3.5k that might not even be enforceable anyway ? Pfft.

I am NOT a Labour supporter in any way but this does all seem a bit desperate.

The PH thread about it was wonderful tbh.

A couple of hundred pages of people being absolutely certain that she had broken the law, calling for her resignation and public flogging and then…

[speedingfine]

Predictable, but…

Thanks for this Mik, brilliant

[GG.]

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2 ... at-i-found#

I have to admit, I didn’t realise a married couple may only have ONE main residence between them. It’s obvious enough if they live together in one place and have a holiday home in another, but although it’s not clear in that article it sounds as though she was routinely living in the property in question ?

Approaching it completely cold (and wrong, as it turns out), if you’re the sole owner of a property and you spend the majority of your time living there, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume it is your main residence. The problem is, in fact, being married ! If they weren’t married it would have been OK.

(edit to add I have a vague recollection of one of the tests being which address you have official mail delivered to, bank statements etc which she may also fall foul of even if not married)

Bottom line, it may or may not have been fraud, she should have got some advice, and it’s £3.5k that might not even be enforceable anyway ? Pfft.

I am NOT a Labour supporter in any way but this does all seem a bit desperate.

On reading more about it I think that's right - as with Trump it is probably the coverup that was worse than the original act. I think Rayner was saying she did live there when in reality she hadn't for a while and was renting it to her brother. It could be that she deliberately left her electoral roll address as the old property to try and obtain some tax or other advantage but equally it could have also just been an oversight. Its odd that you wouldn't keep that up to date as it damages your credit score but if she still had all the bills in her name and just let her brother live there informally maybe it doesn't flag anything up.

Anyway, seemingly lying about living there was reputationally worse than putting down the wrong address on the electoral roll. She may have subsequenltly realised the tax implications and then couldn't set the record straight. @Rich B - I take it back. It isn't worse than Trump's falisfying records - even if simply down to the fact that it isn't obvious Rayner did it on purpose.

The "it was no more than £3,500" argument (as per Dan Niedel - and arguably supporting my point about him) is, however, completely irrelevant. If it was done dishonestly then that is all that counts. Just like Trump - it did not actually serve to get him elected but the argument that won the day in court is that he did the act in the belief that it would and therefore the intent was present.

On Neidel - the recent articles about the VAT on school fees amply makes the point regarding questionable neutrality (https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/06/02/ind ... ading_vat/). He has written a number of quite factual and (without being a tax lawyer, I assume accurate) pieces about how paying for the services in advance may not get around the VAT and he wouldn't recommend it... however, the above article then gets hysterical and blathers on that the ISC "should be ashamed" about using data which was not "statistically representative". For one they didn't write the article, the Mail did and secondly, they should be no more ashamed than Starmer and the Labour party's equal partisan assumptions that barely any kids would leave the sector. Applications are down 2.7% for next year before the tax has come in and two small schools have closed in anticipation of it.

[Rich B]

I'd argue the £3.5k is very relevant. Theres no way in the world any politician would risk getting headlines to save £3.5k, so it is clearly accidental.

If it was £35, would you still argue it was terrible?

[GG.]

I agree that that is the only real way the quantum is relevant is that it could point toward it being accidental. That is very much not a slam dunk however, as (1) people may work on the basis that the risk of being caught is very low and (2) £3.5k is more material to some than others and (3) it assumes the calculations were done and a deliberate cost/benefit judgment made, rather than just "if I do this I don't pay anything".

I would, irrespective of the amount, argue it was behaviour worth condemning if it was deliberate dishonesty. Do you think theft is OK if it is small? I only nicked 3 bottles of wine worth £35 so that's OK?

ETA: Coincidentally enough I'm actually in NYC this week so if any of you want MAGA hats bringing home just let me know

[Jobbo]

Rayner has been exonerated by HMRC and Dan Neidle has been backing Jeremy Hunt today. I’d say he’s very much unbiased.

VAT is a big issue for him - not the law relating to it, but the policy because it always seems to have unintended effects, enriching the merchant when it is cut instead of benefiting consumers for instance. Since there is obviously current discussion about VAT on school fees it’s not surprising he’s talking about it.

[GG.]

Has he written any critical pieces on the fact that the Labour figures are likely not realistic (geniune question)?

Sometime the pieces you don't write say as much as the ones you do.

I'm not saying he's horribly partisan by the way but he raises the bar by saying he is not at all biased. Everyone has inherent biases - its part of human nature. If he's signed up to the labour party it inevitably puts him to one side of the centre on how taxation policy should be formulated.

[Rich B]

I would, irrespective of the amount, argue it was behaviour worth condemning if it was deliberate dishonesty. Do you think theft is OK if it is small? I only nicked 3 bottles of wine worth £35 so that's OK?

but it wasn't deliberate dishonesty - she's been cleared, so your example is wrong. If we were to find an example that worked, it was more like she accidentally didn't scan a £35 bottle of wine properly through the self check out and ended up leaving with it 10 years ago.

[GG.]

I would, irrespective of the amount, argue it was behaviour worth condemning if it was deliberate dishonesty. Do you think theft is OK if it is small? I only nicked 3 bottles of wine worth £35 so that's OK?

but it wasn't deliberate dishonesty - she's been cleared, so your example is wrong. If we were to find an example that worked, it was more like she accidentally didn't scan a £35 bottle of wine properly through the self check out and ended up leaving with it 10 years ago.

That's not what we are debating. You said quantum itself is relevant when adjudging deliberate behaviour - we are debating the relevance of the number if it was dishonest. If it was accidental (assuming not strict liability, which I understand tax is not) then it doesn't matter if it was £35 or Zahawi's £4.7m. If that wasn't what you were saying then we were talking past one another.

When you also saying she was "cleared" - that word means a confirmation that she did nothing wrong. Have either the police or HMRC said that or have they said "no further action being taken"?

Interestingly Dan Niedle published a list of about 6 ways the amount of CGT could be reduced even where it not her main residence - that's rather handy free advice!

[Rich B]

I would, irrespective of the amount, argue it was behaviour worth condemning if it was deliberate dishonesty. Do you think theft is OK if it is small? I only nicked 3 bottles of wine worth £35 so that's OK?

but it wasn't deliberate dishonesty - she's been cleared, so your example is wrong. If we were to find an example that worked, it was more like she accidentally didn't scan a £35 bottle of wine properly through the self check out and ended up leaving with it 10 years ago.

That's not what we are debating. You said quantum itself is relevant when adjudging deliberate behaviour - we are debating the relevant of the number if it was dishonest. If it was accidental then it doesn't matter if it was £35 or Zahawi's £4.7m. If that wasn't what you were saying then we were talking past one another.

and you tried to change it to imply intentional dishonestly and the ethics of theft.

But in the spirit of conversation, I absolutely think that the amount makes a difference. Taking it to its extremes, stealing 10p of grapes in a supermarket is VERY different to stealing £4.7m of tax payers money. Stealing a £35 bottle of wine is also very different to stealing a £35k car - the law certainly thinks that, doesn't it?

But what-about-ism is fairly pointless, because she didn't steal anything.

[GG.]

The law at a fundamental level doesn't, no. They're both theft. A public prosecutor may decide that one is worth bringing to trial and another not but that's a different thing (NB: private prosecutions are also a thing). A judge in sentencing will put one on a different end of the scale than another.

Moving back to trump again, that's a lot of what his supporters object to in his case - if it was someone else, they wouldn't have pursued that case against him. This is where we enter into the murky area of policitcally motivated lawfare. Same with Rayner, I agree - if it wasn't her, likely no investigation would have ever been undertaken.

[Jobbo]

Has he written any critical pieces on the fact that the Labour figures are likely not realistic (geniune question)?

Sometime the pieces you don't write say as much as the ones you do.

I'm not saying he's horribly partisan by the way but he raises the bar by saying he is not at all biased. Everyone has inherent biases - its part of human nature. If he's signed up to the labour party it inevitably puts him to one side of the centre on how taxation policy should be formulated.

Yes he has - https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/06/07/privateschools/

[GG.]

Has he written any critical pieces on the fact that the Labour figures are likely not realistic (geniune question)?

Sometime the pieces you don't write say as much as the ones you do.

I'm not saying he's horribly partisan by the way but he raises the bar by saying he is not at all biased. Everyone has inherent biases - its part of human nature. If he's signed up to the labour party it inevitably puts him to one side of the centre on how taxation policy should be formulated.

Yes he has - https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/06/07/privateschools/

Ah OK - that is interesting. I will give that a read - I expect, however, that no-where in it he says that Labour should be "ashamed" about bringing in a policy that will affect a great many children's futures without a rigorous statistical analysis of whether it will raise a penny. Just guessing...

ETA: Here you go - he describes the Labour figure as using "not a good approach". Blew my hair back that did.

[Rich B]

Has he written any critical pieces on the fact that the Labour figures are likely not realistic (geniune question)?

Sometime the pieces you don't write say as much as the ones you do.

I'm not saying he's horribly partisan by the way but he raises the bar by saying he is not at all biased. Everyone has inherent biases - its part of human nature. If he's signed up to the labour party it inevitably puts him to one side of the centre on how taxation policy should be formulated.

Yes he has - https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/06/07/privateschools/

Ah OK - that is interesting. I will give that a read - I expect, however, that no-where in it he says that Labour should be "ashamed" about bringing in a policy that will affect a great many children's futures without a rigorous statistical analysis of whether it will raise a penny. Just guessing...

in the same way that Conservative Party members don't typically write pieces about how ridiculous the Rwanda scheme is (I heard a great line/fact on it today - more Home Secretaries have flown to Rwanda than illegal imigrants so far!)

Funnily enough, he probably doesn't share your point of view on the VAT/private schools issue - so that's probably why he hasn't written a piece from your point of view.

[GG.]

Yes but he's totally fucking impartial apparently!

[ZedLeg]

It’s pretty ironic that GG is laying his own ideological bias bare in his efforts to prove someone else’s

[GG.]

That's my whole point though - I'm not declaring myself to be an impartial arbiter.