"Donor uses tax loophole Blair pledged to close" 

   Lakshmi Mittal, the billionaire Labour donor at the centre of the
   "steelgate" affair, avoids paying UK personal tax by exploiting a
   legal loophole which Labour pledged to close before being elected,
   the Guardian has established. 

   The government has taken no action to change the law since 1997. 

   It has already come to light that Mr Mittal's company, LNM,
   which received a letter of support from Tony Blair to help him
   buy a Romanian steelworks, was not British, and does not pay
   British corporate taxes. 

   Now the Guardian has discovered that Mr Mittal himself claims
   what is known as "non-domicile" status - a loophole under which
   rich foreigners residing here do not pay income tax, capital
   gains tax or inheritance tax on their worldwide income. 

   Non-domiciles only pay modest amounts of tax on income
   generated in the UK itself, or actually brought into Britain. Mr
   Mittal has saved himself millions of pounds that would otherwise
   have been due to the UK exchequer. 

   Just as the profits of his company LNM are sheltered in the
   Caribbean tax haven of the Dutch Antilles, so Mr Mittal's global
   personal assets, estimated at £1-£2bn, are sheltered offshore. 

   Even his £6m house - called The Summer Palace - in Hampstead, 
   north London is owned by an offshore company, Leadon Ltd, set up
   by offshore tax specialist Malcolm Finney, formerly with Mr
   Mittal's London lawyers Nabarro Nathanson, and now a
   tax-avoidance consultant. 

   What Mr Blair will find embarrassing is that, before coming to
   power, Labour accused the Tories of blocking reform in order to
   continue soliciting donations in return from Greek shipowners
   and Indian millionaires who retained their tax privileges. 

   One Labour policy document warned: "Taxation of non-residents,
   non-domiciles and those with offshore accounts should be 
   overhauled. It is indefensible that a very wealthy few are able
   to live and work in Britain with out making a fair contribution
   through taxation." 

   After winning office in 1997, Labour dropped the plan to abolish
   the loophole. 

   David Mills, a commercial lawyer who has assisted thousands of
   European non-domiciles to set up in the UK, and who advocates
   taxing them, says: "No other country that I know of gives its
   visitor residents such special treatment... which doesn't seem
   quite right, somehow, particularly when they can well afford to
   make a reasonable contribution to the cost of making Britain the
   nice place to live in they evidently think it is." 

   For the purposes of donating, Mr Mittal is a Commonwealth
   citizen who has registered to vote. Although Labour has
   outlawed foreign donations, this makes him British. 

   But for the purposes of taxpaying, he is an Indian national,
   temporarily residing in Britain. Thus he can keep all his foreign
   capital and income away from British tax. 

   Mr Mittal's spokesman refused yesterday to say how much tax
   Mr Mittal paid in the UK as a proportion of his global income. He
   said it was "private".

   David Leigh and David Pallister
   Tuesday February 19, 2002
   The Guardian 
   http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,652606,00.html

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   "Perceptions" note: 

   An impartial onlooker - maybe your extraterrestrial visitor -
   would opine "country is a really `slave state' but is called a
   `democracy' by the slave-owners: the billionaires who `own' all
   property but do not pay real taxes, and manipulate all 
   legislation while disregarding human ethics"

   See http://www.perceptions.couk.com/devils.html
 
   Evidence file for:
   http://www.perceptions.couk.com/tax.html and
   http://www.perceptions.couk.com/laworjustice.html & linked pages

-------------------------------------------------

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