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Imagine I was running a business and wanted new premises. I identify the property and agree sale terms. The property is owned by a special purpose company and the vendor will only sell me the company. So the deal is structured that way. Am I a tax avoider because stamp duty land tax is not payable on the shares? Should I have insisted on an asset sale so that SDLT was payable? I cannot believe that readers would have advised their clients that they should do this – nor do I believe that many members of the public would do it either.
Should the answer be the same if I happened to be the former prime minister, there were lots of noughts in the sale price, the vendor was a British Virgin Islands company, and the ultimate owners of that company had a foreign name? Of course it should. Coverage of the Blairs’ property acquisition has been a classic case of ‘no smoke without fire’. What I have read states that they did ‘nothing wrong’ and was ‘perfectly legal’. But the impression given is that something shady is going on somewhere.
I hold no personal beef for the Blairs. The leak of the Pandora papers has produced a huge amount of information and there is no doubt that some of it will point, after proper investigation, to serious irregularities, criminal activity and hidden wealth. It is right that these things should be investigated. But please let’s have some serious and informed reporting. Suggesting, if only by implication, that ordinary business dealings and serious, perhaps criminal, activity are one and the same thing is counterproductive. It lessens the impact of the reporting on those whose affairs really should be scrutinised.
