surely that was only ever legal because someone forgot to make it illegal

( Turing's Artificial Hand Sig Sauer, Mon 26 Jul 2021, 15:57, archived)

it was the 'film partnership' schemes
you'd 'borrow' 97% of your participation from the scheme provider, write a cheque for the 3%, then it would just so happen that 40% of your total investment (including the borrowed bit, which was interest only) would equal your income tax bill. To pay the interest on the 'loan' bit you just assigned your partnership income from the film to the lender.

Then, before the 15 year (iirc) tax relived period was up you'd pay a firm a relatively small sum to buy your partnership investment from you, at which point your deferred tax bill essentially vanished (it would be based on the huge sum funded by the loan).

HMRC then slapped huge tax bills on people based on total participation amount rather than the amount of the cheque written when they decided the schemes were not intended to finance films after all.

I TOLD YOU IT WAS BORING.
(Smegg Wallace The O.G. Q.R., Mon 26 Jul 2021, 16:05, archived)

dodgy tax dodge is dodgy

( Turing's Artificial Hand Sig Sauer, Mon 26 Jul 2021, 16:14, archived)

yeah, it was morally reprehensible

(Smegg Wallace The O.G. Q.R., Mon 26 Jul 2021, 16:16, archived)

pretty lol though when one client complained and said they hadn't understood what they were buying into.
Her day job was a tax lawyer, designing these exact schemes.
(Smegg Wallace The O.G. Q.R., Mon 26 Jul 2021, 16:18, archived)

ok that is lol

( Turing's Artificial Hand Sig Sauer, Mon 26 Jul 2021, 16:26, archived)

Someone watched legally blonde one too many times

( Smash Monkey 2 Anyone know a good therapist in South Africa?, Mon 26 Jul 2021, 17:34, archived)

she was just lying; she'd only made a personal contribution of 20 grand to get a 40 grand rebate, and was being hit with a tax demand many multiples of that.

(Smegg Wallace The O.G. Q.R., Mon 26 Jul 2021, 17:56, archived)