The Blood is The Life 27-02-2012

[miss_s_b]

• On Ken Livingstone's Alleged Tax Avoidance.
  This is EXACTLY how I feel.
  (tags: epicfail labour )
  
  
• First female ascent of The Angels' Share
  Climbing Awesomeness :)
  (tags: climbing )
  
  
• Natalie Portman with a tache.
  I miss my BeardOfEvilTM now :(
  (tags: )
  
  
• LOL I loved this cartoon
  (tags: funny )
  
• Teller Reveals His Secrets
  Penn is louder, but Teller is cooler.
  (tags: )
  
  
• Doncaster 'is part of Scotland' after 900-year-old administrative error comes to light - Yahoo!
  (tags: awesome )
  
• Doctor Her » Women in Doctor Who
  "To my mind, the problem with Dr Who is not the women that appear in the series, it’s the necessity of using peril as a plot device to drive the stories. At its most simplistic, Dr Who is a show about a semi-omnipotent being who gets into a difficult situation and extracts himself from it using his extraordinary brilliance, resolve and courage. To illustrate the danger of the situation, the (usually female) companion gets into trouble and has to be rescued." I'm really enjoying reading Doctor Her of late; I mean, a feminist Doctor Who blog! Who came up with that idea?
  (tags: DoctorWho )
  
  
• Transubstantiation
  Fabulous fiction
  (tags: fic )
  
  

Comments

[gwenhwyfaer]

Er, that Telegraph story is complete horseshite. The only concrete thing it shows is that Ken Livingstone uses a service company to capture income; that's a very common thing to do, and in some sectors it's actually required, because some companies will only contract with other companies. Moreover, whilst the article states that he could avoid tax by pulling out the money in dividends, it offers no indication that he has done so; he could also pay himself a wage out of the cash reserves in the company, which would attract entirely normal rates of income tax. He could even use the company as an accumulator, paying himself and his wife a wage that just covers their combined living expenses, but that is, relatively speaking, guaranteed. If he does that, he'll actually pay more tax than if he were self-employed directly - because he'll be paying corporation tax on his entire income, even the part exempt from income tax, and he'll also be paying NI at both ends.

In short, until someone actually presents some evidence as to how he's withdrawn that cash from his service company, he doesn't have a case to answer, and the Telegraph article is, as far as I can see, nothing more than a cheap libel.

[miss_s_b]

As far as I can tell, the problem is not that he's used a service company to capture income per se, it that he routinely criticises other people for doing something he does himself.

Yeah, the rest of it did seem to be on somewhat shaky ground, but that was on top of the story, not the meat of the story as far as I can tell.

[rhythmaning]

I hadn't heard about the Ken Livingstone tax avoidance.

What he was doing was, apparently, completely legal, and something many people who freelance do (including me...). He will also pay tax on any dividends he takes from his company.

However, the hypocrisy is staggering. Unless his head is so far up his arse that £200k/year is not sufficient to make him a "rich bastard".

[miss_s_b]

Indeed.