Bus hits road to spread message on tax-dodging

12:00pm Saturday 22nd September 2012 in News

Niall Cooper, with the other campaigners. Picture: OX54303 Richard Cave Niall Cooper, with the other campaigners. Picture: OX54303 Richard Cave

CHARITY workers, clergymen and an MP asked residents to get on board with a campaign against tax-dodging yesterday.

The Christian Aid and Church Action on Poverty bus visited Bonn Square in Oxford as part of the 2012 Tax Justice Bus Tour, which aims to highlight the injustice of global tax dodging.

The bus was welcomed to the city by Oxford East MP Andrew Smith . Niall Cooper, of Church Action on Poverty, said: “At a time when spending cuts are having a devastating impact on the UK’s poorest people and communities, tax-dodging is morally unacceptable.

“It amounts to robbing the poor. If the Government just collected the £35bn of tax they know is going uncollected, they could invest properly in tackling UK poverty.”

Mr Cooper is pictured, far right, with from left, Savior Mwambasa, the director of Zambia’s centre for trade policy and development, Methodist minister the Rev Martin Wellings, the Rev Bob Wilkes, vicar of St Michael at the Northgate Church, the Rev Richard Frith, curate of St Mary Magdalen Church, Claire Fussell of the charity Christian Aid and Andrew Smith MP.

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Comments(9)

Lord Palmerstone says...
12:31pm Sat 22 Sep 12

One just hopes that when people make wills leaving money to charity they leave it to cancer charities or the Salvation Army , rather than horrible political organizations like Christian Aid. It has to be more than mere naivety to suppose that if you handed the bureaucracy £35,000,000,000 that it would be used in any way other than that which would benefit the bureaucracy. And yes, Mitchell should go, not for being obnoxious, but for being such a greasey pole climber as to take the "Overseas Aid" portfolio on originally when any decent person would have told Cameron where to put it and our £11,000,000,000 tax that that grotesque organisation blows annually.

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ger elttil OX2 0EJ says...
12:53pm Sat 22 Sep 12

Lord Palmerstone wrote:
One just hopes that when people make wills leaving money to charity they leave it to cancer charities or the Salvation Army , rather than horrible political organizations like Christian Aid. It has to be more than mere naivety to suppose that if you handed the bureaucracy £35,000,000,000 that it would be used in any way other than that which would benefit the bureaucracy. And yes, Mitchell should go, not for being obnoxious, but for being such a greasey pole climber as to take the "Overseas Aid" portfolio on originally when any decent person would have told Cameron where to put it and our £11,000,000,000 tax that that grotesque organisation blows annually.
£35 Billion, there are a lot of countries that Mr Cameron could bomb to hell and back for that kind of money.

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Darkforbid says...
1:09pm Sat 22 Sep 12

OMG!! You mean all the legal Tax dodgers, are saying,,, the thing they don't suffer is bad.

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Lord Palmerstone says...
2:03pm Sat 22 Sep 12

£35 Billion, there are a lot of countries that Mr Cameron could bomb to hell and back for that kind of money.
OMG!! You mean all the legal Tax dodgers, are saying,,, the thing they don't suffer is bad.
I don't think the money would go to bombing anyone. Clerks don't like the Armed Forces and they do like to spend our cash on pensions and expenses for themselves and for their chums in the "charities" whose Chief Executives clearly need £135,000 a year and a Beemer. DF I know you like to pay 20% of your benefit to be like the rest of us-try 40% for me, will you? But I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.

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Andrew:Oxford says...
2:21pm Sat 22 Sep 12

**Niall Cooper, of Church Action on Poverty, said: “At a time when spending cuts are having a devastating impact on the UK’s poorest people and communities, tax-dodging is morally unacceptable.**

I'm not entirely sure that tax-dodging is morally acceptable even when there aren't spending cuts.

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Darkforbid says...
2:39pm Sat 22 Sep 12

"DF I know you like to pay 20% of your benefit to be like the rest of us-try 40% for me"

Sorry LP, still have my Charity status,,, but hell, pay me what your getting and 80% happily.

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Lord Palmerstone says...
9:25am Sun 23 Sep 12

Andrew:Oxford wrote:
**Niall Cooper, of Church Action on Poverty, said: “At a time when spending cuts are having a devastating impact on the UK’s poorest people and communities, tax-dodging is morally unacceptable.**

I'm not entirely sure that tax-dodging is morally acceptable even when there aren't spending cuts.
Andrew, he's conflating tax avoidance and tax evasion which is what you expect from the large number of extreme left organisations which masquerade as charities. You and I get tax relief on pension contrbutions and a self employed plumber working in Chelsea grosses £10,000 a year. To CA it's all the same, though I notice today that even that lot have conceded that the overseas development industry bandwagon is out of control.
Rev Martin Wellings, the Rev Bob Wilkes, vicar of St Michael at the Northgate Church, the Rev Richard Frith, curate of St Mary Magdalen Church should be very wary of the company they are keeping.

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Orchard says...
12:22pm Sun 23 Sep 12

I went self employed in the late 90's and was not that diligent with my accounts, the Inland Revenue laid low and waited six years before having a go at me. This is becauce they can then multiply by six any discrepency they find and add compound interest.. I paid up thinking this money was going to the troops etc., in actual fact some went in commission as a bonus for the collectors!. As a result I now follow unwritten procedure and do not claim all my expenses, so I would cast doubt at the 35bn figure given. The Oxford Mail would have difficulty finding staff if they had to pay the office bills out of their wages?

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Myron Blatz says...
4:07pm Sun 23 Sep 12

Yes, Christian aid organisations must be feeling the 'pinch' in the depression - no longer can they count on someone being able to turn water into wine, or cure famine with loaves and fishes.

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