I' appreciate i'm probably in a minority here but I have some sympathy for the "investors"

in these film schemes.

I had a mate who was involved with Ingenius media for a while. They were constantly talking to HMRC who knew exactly what they were offering (and as far as he was concerned HMRC had cindicated it was ok) which all came about as a result of the government at the time introducing tax breaks to try and get people to invest in the film industry. From when I worked in a firm with a tax department all of these financial advisers and tax specialists were in constant dialogue with HMRC who would frequently indicate that something as ok or be non committal as to whether it was before suddenly deciding to close the loophole if it became a bit too successful for their liking.

Of course now we are in an age where tax avoidance is akin to devil worshipping in some eyes its never mentioned that the practice was actively encouragd by the government at the time ot started up and politicians like to act all outraged about it.

Tax avoidance is a complex area and indeed one of the only areas where people can effectively be clobbered retrospectively for something that was not actually considered/found to be illegal at the time they did it. Most if not all investors in this scheme will have been told that HMRC had given it the nod before investing. Most will have relied on their financial advisers.

Appreciate osme will take the view that nobody should partake in tax avoidance at all but given the opportunity I think pretty much everyone tries to minimise the amount of tax they pay be it through income tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax. I don;t think it makes someone evil or immoral although you would like to think they would have checked whether this guy had something like this in his history before offering him that job!

Posted By: Jim, Feb 21, 08:43:08