Anyone putting money into tax havens should “apologise” – Labour leader @jeremycorbyn on #ParadisePapers at #CBI17 https://t.co/GNBTMviXCa pic.twitter.com/Gu0ygD54i3

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) November 6, 2017

Hang on a minute, does this mean Corbyn thinks McDonnell should apologise for his pension investments being managed offshore?

John McDonnell is going on the attack over the Paradise Papers, insisting: “Where the Tories refuse to act, Labour will end the era of government turning a blind eye to the scandal of tax avoidance by clamping down on tax havens and ending the loopholes”. The main revelation from the leak so far is that the Queen’s private estate has money invested offshore. Not entirely unlike John McDonnell’s pension investments being managed in Guernsey… 

The Guardian’s story this morning targets those that have assets in 19 tax havens including the Cayman Islands. Which reminded Guido of Guardian Media Group’s GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited, registered in the Caymans.

The Huffington Post splash this morning also leads on the Paradise Papers – no mention that HuffPo’s profits are blatantly transferred to Luxembourg. The owners of the Mail, News UK and The Telegraph also have various offshore tax-efficient structures. Facebook, Google and Guido are not UK-owned though they have at least never piously and hypocritically claimed to be in favour of clamping down on tax havens. Guido’s point is that the likes of the Guardian should practice what they preach…

The budget is a month away and Guido expects little relief from the Chancellor. The Tories like to say they are “the party of low taxes”. Which rings a little hollow when the tax burden is now higher than it was under the dead hand of Gordon Brown in 2009 and it will, if the OBR is correct, hit a level not seen for two generations. It is as if Nigel Lawson never happened…

Britain now has a higher tax burden than Spain, the share of GDP taken in tax is a full 10 points higher than it is in Ireland and 8 points higher than the traditionally low tax USA. Governments will never be able to cut taxes as long as people look to the state to solve all their problems. The welfare state is a constant in most households, not just a safety net when you are sick or unemployed. In work benefits subsidise low pay. Having children – even if you can’t afford them – is financially incentivised. Labour bleat on about welfare cuts yet more than half of households receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes. This is not sustainable. If tax evasion is anything like the problem the left claim it is baffling that more tax is being collected nowadays than in the 70s…

Gordon Brown used to talk about prudence when he was squandering money. George Osborne claimed he would fix the roof and balance the budget in 5 years. The deficit lasted longer than Osborne’s political career…

The only way to cut taxes is to grow the economy. The way to turbo-charge the economy is to cut taxes on individuals and enterprises. The Tories seem to have forgotten that their purpose is not to just manage the welfare state. What is the point of the Tories if they don’t cut taxes?

Green NGOs are spending millions lobbying against the interests of British taxpayers, analysis by the Taxpayers’ Alliance has found. Taxpayers’ cash received by charities including Friends of the Earth and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is being splurged on partisan political activities such as supporting parliamentary candidates and lobbying ministers. The cash has been used to block projects which experts say would bring down energy costs for consumers. 

The RSPB received £27.5 million in grants from UK taxpayers in 2015 and 2016. Its sister organisation Birdlife International received the third highest amount of European Commission taxpayer funding of any green group, being granted €3.8 million. Likewise, Friends of the Earth received the second highest amount of any such group, being handed €7.6 million. In conjunction with Greenpeace (which does not receive EC funding), these charities have acted more like pressure groups by:

• Orchestrating a massive media campaign to fight a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point;
• Launching law suits to obstruct the construction of new power stations;
• Lobbying the UK government to prevent expansion of infrastructure;
• Lobbying successfully to prevent exploration for shale gas taking place in Wiltshire;
• Publishing misleading advertising to influence consumer and public opinion, and spread falsehoods about shale gas exploration.

Friends of the Earth also spent more than £100,000 backing a pro-Green crop of parliamentary candidates. The Electoral Commission intervened and fined Friends of the Earth for failing to register properly as a donor. The amount spent was way over the limit imposed on candidates themselves in the final stages of the election campaign…

Meanwhile, the Pesticide Action Network, which has received more than €710,000 from the European Commission over the past decade, is currently campaigning to ban glyphosate (a weed killer). The pressure group claims glyphosate is a “potentially cancer-inducing chemical”, despite Europe’s own chemicals regulator, the European Chemicals Agency, finding

“The available scientific evidence did not meet the criteria… to classify glyphosate for specific target organ toxicity, or as a carcinogen, as a mutagen or for reproductive toxicity.”

A ban would cost taxpayers £228 million a year. A probe carried out by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute found that, overall:

• A total of €86.5 million has been given to a range of environmental groups by the European Commission over the past 10 years;
• 34 groups have been given more than €1 million.

This enormous pile of taxpayers cash is being ploughed into lobbying activities which directly prevent UK taxpayers from benefiting from cheaper energy and new infrastructure. Taxpayers’ Alliance Chief Executive John O’Connell said:

“It’s bad enough that politicians are piling costs onto consumers with their hare-brained energy schemes, but the fact that taxpayers are paying pressure groups to campaign against their interests adds insult to injury.

“There are plenty of reasons for the government to stop this gravy train in its tracks as it is, but the fact that some of these groups have run dishonest campaigns and fallen foul of electoral commission rules must surely be a final nail in the coffin for this taxpayer funded lobbying.”

Stay tuned this week for more in Guido’s Green NGO Sockpuppets series…

UKIP leadership candidate John Rees-Evans has a very eclectic CV. He claims to have been a “private soldier” working with the Ugandan People’s Defence Force to fight terrorists. He says he has worked in a meat factory, as a postman, as a pizza delivery man and a builder. He apparently runs an expedition company called Team Kilimanjaro, and has an “apocalypse-proof” compound in rural Bulgaria complete with a cache of weapons and panic room. Yet Rees-Evans is not so vocal about another of his interests…

Rees-Evans’ personal email address is registered at an unusual looking website called SAS.VC. “SAS” stands for “Safaris, Adventure and Survival”, and purports to organise holidays in Africa. The “.VC” domain is the internet country code for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The website is registered to a “Linus Evans” in Belize. Slightly curious for an African holiday company…

Even more curious is the about page for the “SAS” website. Far from mentioning anything about “Survival, Adventure and Safaris”, it reveals “SAS” actually stands for “Systech Accounting Services”. It says:

“Systech Accounting Services is a trading name of Exposure Limited, incorporated in Belize… Systech specialise in assisting their clients with the preparation of annual accounts, income tax and corporation tax returns, bookkeeping, payroll processing, business start-ups, international company formations, company secretarial, translation & proofreading services, and specialist taxation advice.”

So “SAS” is actually a “specialist taxation” firm based in Belize, also using the name “Exposure Limited”. Exposure is run by a Leo Rees-Evans and the company designed John Rees-Evans’ website.

What else do we know about Exposure / Systech Accounting Services? Online directories reveal Systech offers offshore bank accounts and offshore company incorporation. For a fee of €499, Systech boasts it will set you up with “the world’s leading offshore bank”. The directory also gives an address at a PO Box in Popovo, Bulgaria. Remember who else lived in rural Bulgaria? John Rees-Evans, at his famous high-security compound…

It seems odd that Rees-Evans has been so boastful about his varied career and never mentioned Systech Accounting Services and their offshore banking services. Just the other day Rees-Evans was talking at a hustings about how terrible it is when British taxpayers’ money “ends up in offshore bank accounts”. Unfortunately he hasn’t replied to Guido’s requests for comment. We’d need the real SAS to breach his compound to get to the bottom of it…

Margaret Hodge is calling for people to join her in boycotting Amazon over their tax arrangements:

“I hope people take a leaf out of my book and stop using Amazon. I don’t use them at all… If we stop using Amazon then they may understand how angry their customers are.”

You can read more about Hodge’s strong and principled views on Amazon in her book Called to Account, for sale on Amazon:

“I don’t use them at all…”