Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Buy your local veg from an Offshore Company ...
... and other local property deal delights. Our local corner store is owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, for example.
Thanks to an FOI request by Private Eye last year to reveal which properties in the UK are owned by offshore companies and a useful interactive map to visualize the data, you can now find out which properties around you (or elsewhere) are owned by offshore companies. You need to click on each highlighted property for this information which may include how much they paid.
Of course there maybe legitimate reasons for this with some property deals, with inward investment a common enough occurrence but, it is surprising to see how many exist just within your local area, including terraced properties on some pretty standard streets.
What we can't know is how the money used to buy a property was earned in the first place. But, by taking the extraordinary effort to register a property in for example the British Virgin Islands (the first three properties I looked at near to me are under three different companies) you would think tax avoidance on income/future sale might be an incentive.
Take a look; Private Eye
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Mostly Cyrus, what a surprise. Rainbow is owned by something in the British Virgin Islands? Wow!
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Strangely, humble abodes such as a house on Duckett Rd is also registered in the BVI. People do go to extraordinary lengths don't they. Nevermind John I'm sure your council tax will help pay for any road repairs that may appear on roads such as Duckett.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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Price is way low ...
Kind of expect cypriot based around here but, BVI on local terraced properties, not really. Guess the secrecy walls are better at BVI and it's all set up over the internet anyway.
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Zackly! Someone sells low to avoid crystallising a capital gain by any chance???
This should have created a red flag with HMRC... How do you find out if it did I wonder?
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Permalink Reply by EMC2 on
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HMRC may well have already made the connection Justin. And maybe they'll find a little more when they start looking at the Panama Papers ...but as Gideon is in charge, maybe not...
This is also worth a look
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Excellent, very clear article Eugene. So comparing property tax charges over a 5 year period on a £10 million property, in New York the charge totals £900,000 but in London .... £10,000. That's crazy. Actually it's just plain stupid. Money like this could go to the day care centre for the elderly being closed by Haringey, for example.
We'll see if Cameron & Osborne really do move on this. Will hurt their chums though so I'm not so sure.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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You sure that this isn't what they paid for the shed in the garden?
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That is fascinating. Lets see just how committed Cameron et al are to this.
By the way. Everyone mentions the BVI as being host to a lot of 'off-shore companies' (see the graph below of the jurisdictions the Panamanian law firm set up companies in from the BBC). Last I heard the British Virgin Islands (and Bermuda while we are at it) were Crown Dependant Territories. That is, it is within the gift of the UK Gov to force these territories to clean up their acts, threatening direct rule as happened in the Turks and Caicos. But, we will not do that will we?
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It's interesting that it was the issue of revealing the beneficiaries of trusts that Cameron personal intervened to stop. I wonder what trust arrangements his late father set up?
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Also, from today's Guardian, in 2009 Cameron senior's wealth was estimated by the Sunday Times in 2009 as being £10m, yet then he died his will declared an inheritance worth "only" £2.74m.
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