Re: Loan Charge?
And there is also no law saying that doing 70mph on the motorway is acceptable practice.
Sorry, but that isn't true. [1,2]
Anything that is not prohibited is permitted, that is the nature of laws everywhere.
While that is generally true of the UK [3], it isn't wholly accurate I'm afraid.[4] Ex post facto law occasionally changes past relationships.
This income was legally declared, open to HMRC scrutiny, and could have been challenged any time since.
It could, and I'd agree, it should have been challenged. However, there is no requirement to do so. Gordon Brown, if I'm not mistaken, was the first chancellor to apply ex post facto legislation to tax affairs, so it's not without precedent.[5]
The fact they did not do so in even a single case within the time period in which they were obliged to do so implicitly makes it legitimate.
Unfortunately implicitly legitimate and actually legitimate aren't the same thing. Again, given the law may be changed retrospectively, and there is history of past chancellors retrospectively taxing what they see as evasion or at least unfair avoidance, how sure could you really be that an artificially complex offshore structure wouldn't come back to bite? Really?
It really is equivalent of retroactively reducing the speed limit and then sending everyone who exceeded the new speed limit going all the way back 19 years speeding tickets.
Sorry, but it really isn't. Speed limits are specifically authorised in law, and avoiding tax using EBT, which is really their only purpose, simply isn't authorised in law. It exploited a grey area in tax legislation, which is the industry I work in for a bank, and its really no suprise to most in the industry that this chicken came home to roost.
You'll find I've backstopped everything with a citation. Please do the same when disputing what I've said. I know you are upset at the changes, but the harder you press tax avoidance, the more it looks to the tax man like evasion, and EBTs press harder than was perhaps wise.
1 - https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/traffic-signs-signals-and-road-markings
2 - https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits
3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbidden_is_allowed
4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law
5 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514972/Brown-hits-millions-with-backdated-wealth-tax.html