"SavetheUKCC" petition

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Alan Walton
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Alan Walton » Sat Sep 03, 2016 10:10 pm

Let's get back to the point a little

Mr Basman chose to not to concern himself to pay VAT

This is classed as evasion in the courts eyes, and I an easily see in his own eyes he thinks he is above the law of the land

If we all thought like Mr Basman's point of view is correct what is the point of taxation

He is guilty of tax evasion full stop, lets not condone anything he has done

Brian Towers
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Brian Towers » Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:15 am

John McKenna wrote:Dealing with the latter first - tax avoidance and evasion only exist in specific cases when the UK courts judge that they do. Those judgements are often subject to appeals to higher courts and could be overturned.
What utter nonsense!

All my life I have been and intend to continue until the day I die a tax avoider (regarding tobacco tax). That has absolutely nothing to do with judgements by UK courts at any level.

While I'm in "confessional" mode I believe I've also never paid import taxes although back in the late 80's when I used to regularly drive to the Alps to ski in the winter I used to offer to pay. I always made a point of stopping off in a French supermarket and stocking up on 11 bottles of good French wine. At Dover I would dodge the massive "Nothing to declare" queue by going into the red channel armed with my receipt for 8.25 litres of still wine (0.25 litres over the limit) and offer to pay the excess. Funnily enough I was always waved through as those friendly customs chappies decided their time was more valuable than that ;-).
Ah, but I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:31 am

Jonathan Bryant wrote: Anyhoo, the point is that things may move from being seen as tax avoidance to tax evasion and back again - and the perception may differ according to who is doing the perceiving.
The Apple or Google analogy is that the UKCC could have run itself on a "now you see it, now you don't" approach. That would have been that whilst marketed as a national competition, it was notionally run by local junior organisations whose turnover would be well below the VAT threshold. If they spotted it, HMRC might have challenged it.

You perhaps wonder why HMRC chose to investigate in the first place. Could it have been some aggrieved participant later taking up employment with them?

(edit) to correct attribution (/edit)
Last edited by Roger de Coverly on Sun Sep 04, 2016 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ian Thompson
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Ian Thompson » Sun Sep 04, 2016 2:05 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:You perhaps wonder why HMRC chose to investigate in the first place. Could it have been some aggrieved participant later taking up employment with them?
It's been said that Mike Basman correctly completed his tax return and paid all the income tax due. That would suggest he was declaring income of something like £150K per annum from the UKCC and, presumably, tax deductible expenditure relating to the UKCC in excess of £100K per annum. One would hope that HMRC is sufficiently well organised that it would know that a sole trader with a turnover at these levels should be paying VAT, so it would be an automatic routine check that they were.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Sep 04, 2016 2:17 am

Ian Thompson wrote: That would suggest he was declaring income of something like £150K per annum from the UKCC
You can plausibly make the entry fees to add up to that sort of amount.

For schools it's £ 40 for 40 players. If there are 75,000 players in the school stages, that's £ 75,000. Add to that the £ 15 entry fee for the later stages and assume 25 events with 200 players each gives another £ 75,000.

Richard James
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Richard James » Sun Sep 04, 2016 8:54 am

A few factual corrections:

The UKCC used to claim 75000 children taking part. The report on the 2016 event claims "45000 children from 1400 schools". Last year they were quoting "48200 children", also from 1400 schools. There has been a steady decline in numbers for the past decade or so.

The entry fee last year was £40 for 30 children, not 40 children, plus an extra £15 for 15 additional children. The numbers are, of course, exaggerated. Many schools will only have 20, or even 10 children in their club, but they still have to enter for 30 children. There's also a small, probably insignificant amount of double counting as some children enter both through their school and through their chess club.

I'll be writing more about the UK Chess Challenge later: meanwhile you might want to read my latest Chess Improver post, which outlines one important reason why most children make little or no progress at chess.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Alex Holowczak » Sun Sep 04, 2016 8:59 am

Richard James wrote:The entry fee last year was £40 for 30 children, not 40 children, plus an extra £15 for 15 additional children. The numbers are, of course, exaggerated. Many schools will only have 20, or even 10 children in their club, but they still have to enter for 30 children. There's also a small, probably insignificant amount of double counting as some children enter both through their school and through their chess club.
There are also likely to be schools who have 40 or 50 children in their club, but the school only buys a box for 30.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Sep 04, 2016 9:09 am

Richard James wrote: Last year they were quoting "48200 children", also from 1400 schools.

1400 Schools at £ 40 a school is £ 56,000, which is within the VAT turnover limit. It would be only when you add n times £ 15 where n is the number of entrants to Mega, Giga and Strat stages that you get above the VAT limit. Sponsorship income adds to turnover as well.
Last edited by Roger de Coverly on Sun Sep 04, 2016 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Richard James
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Richard James » Sun Sep 04, 2016 9:16 am

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Richard James wrote:The entry fee last year was £40 for 30 children, not 40 children, plus an extra £15 for 15 additional children. The numbers are, of course, exaggerated. Many schools will only have 20, or even 10 children in their club, but they still have to enter for 30 children. There's also a small, probably insignificant amount of double counting as some children enter both through their school and through their chess club.
There are also likely to be schools who have 40 or 50 children in their club, but the school only buys a box for 30.
Quite possibly, but I'd guess only at secondary level. Otherwise you'd have a lot of very unhappy kids who don't get their fluffy mascots.

Richard James
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Richard James » Sun Sep 04, 2016 9:18 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Richard James wrote: Last year they were quoting "48200 children", also from 1400 schools.

1400 Schools at £ 40 a school is £ 56,000, which is within the VAT turnover limit. It would be only when you add n times £ 15 where n in the number of entrants to Mega, Giga and Strat stages that you get above the VAT limit. Sponsorship income adds to turnover as well.
Also some schools (no idea how many) paying £55, £70 or more, but I wouldn't think that would be enough to reach the VAT threshold.

Sean Hewitt
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Sean Hewitt » Sun Sep 04, 2016 11:19 am

JustinHorton wrote:I'm not implying anything: I'm saying explicitly that there is a good deal that it would be pertinent to know that we do not know, because Mike Basman and his advocates, while saying a good deal that is irrelevant or misleading, have preferred not to tell us.
Whatever one might think about how this all came about, this is Mike Basman and HMRC's business only.
Roger de Coverly wrote:1400 Schools at £ 40 a school is £ 56,000, which is within the VAT turnover limit. It would be only when you add n times £ 15 where n is the number of entrants to Mega, Giga and Strat stages that you get above the VAT limit. Sponsorship income adds to turnover as well.
Speculation is unnecessary. HMRC obtained a judgement for £300k for 10 years worth of VAT. That fact alone is enough to tell us that turnover was £1.5m - £1.8m in that period (the range is because we don't know the level of penaties included in the figure).

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JustinHorton
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by JustinHorton » Sun Sep 04, 2016 11:29 am

Sean Hewitt wrote:
JustinHorton wrote:I'm not implying anything: I'm saying explicitly that there is a good deal that it would be pertinent to know that we do not know, because Mike Basman and his advocates, while saying a good deal that is irrelevant or misleading, have preferred not to tell us.
Whatever one might think about how this all came about, this is Mike Basman and HMRC's business only.
No it isn't, because it has been put into the public domain by Mike Basman and his supporters, originally in the petition which was the initial subject of this thread, and subsequently in a variety of public statements which are not credible in the absence of information which would support them.
"Do you play chess?"
"Yes, but I prefer a game with a better chance of cheating."

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Roger de Coverly
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Sep 04, 2016 11:47 am

Sean Hewitt wrote: Speculation is unnecessary. HMRC obtained a judgement for £300k for 10 years worth of VAT.
£ 30,000 per year does seem somewhat on the high side, particularly if you actually did the calculations there should be considerable offsets for the purchase of non monetary prizes and awards. Part of their case was that no data was submitted, leaving HMRC to ask for as much as they thought they could get the Court to agree to.

Sean Hewitt
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Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by Sean Hewitt » Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:15 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Sean Hewitt wrote:Whatever one might think about how this all came about, this is Mike Basman and HMRC's business only.
No it isn't...
We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

John McKenna

Re: "SavetheUKCC" petition

Post by John McKenna » Sun Sep 04, 2016 4:54 pm

JustinHorton wrote:I'm not implying anything: I'm saying explicitly that there is a good deal that it would be pertinent to know that we do not know, because Mike Basman and his advocates, while saying a good deal that is irrelevant or misleading, have preferred not to tell us.

I'm also saying that no, we don't have the right to take our own business decisions outwith the dictates of the law, that the legal process here - as far as the validity of applying VAT in relation to UKCC is concerned - appears to have been exhausted some time ago, that there is no reason to think that the courts' rulings came a a surprise to Mike Basman and that comparisons to other cases are therefore misleading, that we don't know what income, if any, Mike Basman derived from UKCC or whether it can be described as modest, that a wound is not really healed unless restitution is made in full and that if you think three hundred grand is a "minor graze" then I recommend that you engage in illegal conduct that deprives the state of that amount of revenue and see if the courts are minded to take a similar view. (This last point may be a more useful standard of comparison than whatabouttery invoking Google.)

Shorter me: I am not terribly interested in what people reckon. I am mostly interested in what people know.
So, Justin ("not implying anything") Horton exhorts me to take up non-payment of state revenues to the tune of £300,000 that I might learn the value of money.

When he tells me he's climbed Trump Tower and confirmed with the owner that £300,000 is an awful lot of skin to risk grazing then I just might start to agree with him.

(By the way, how sure are you that "the legal process appears to have been exhausted some time ago", and just when do you think that was, Justin?)
Brian Towers wrote:
John McKenna wrote:Dealing with the latter first - tax avoidance and evasion only exist in specific cases when the UK courts judge that they do. Those judgements are often subject to appeals to higher courts and could be overturned.
What utter nonsense!

All my life I have been and intend to continue until the day I die a tax avoider (regarding tobacco tax). That has absolutely nothing to do with judgements by UK courts at any level.

While I'm in "confessional" mode I believe I've also never paid import taxes although back in the late 80's when I used to regularly drive to the Alps to ski in the winter I used to offer to pay. I always made a point of stopping off in a French supermarket and stocking up on 11 bottles of good French wine. At Dover I would dodge the massive "Nothing to declare" queue by going into the red channel armed with my receipt for 8.25 litres of still wine (0.25 litres over the limit) and offer to pay the excess. Funnily enough I was always waved through as those friendly customs chappies decided their time was more valuable than that ;-).
And, Brian "'Nothing to declare'" Towers admits to minor misdemeanours to show me that true crimes really do exist even when they remain undetected. (However, I wrote "... in specific cases... " and meant cases brought before the courts not old anecdotes on a forum.)

If he managed to come back from Manila, alive, with a pardon from Duterte after confessing to smuggling drugs in the Philippines I just might start to take him seriously.

I know that in this kangaroo court comparisons with other cases are frowned upon, to say the least, but all things are relative, and in the vast scheme of dubious tax affairs this really is small potatoes, and the £12,000 HMRC claim the poor woman mentioned in the
Radio 4 Money Box programme owes is truly peanuts.(Of course, to the ones who owe £300,000 & £12,000 the sums of money are large and life changing.)

This thread is not about saving the UKCC it is about pillorying someone who has offended your sensibilities.

I'll now take my leave of you with this old refrain -

You're public guardians bold, yet wary
And of yourselves you take good care
To risk your precious lives you're chary

When tempers flare, you're never there
But when you meet a hapless man or woman
Or little boys that do no harm

You run them in, you run them in
You run them in, you run them in
You show them you're the bold gendarmes

You run them in, you run them in,
You run them in, you run them in
You show them you're the bold gendarmes.


(And you demand to know everything, and that they turn out the contents of their pockets.)

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