David Cameron Releases Tax Data After Panama Papers Backlash

By STEVEN ERLANGER

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, admitting that he had made a mess of responding to questions about his inheritance from his father, who had an investment company offshore, on Sunday released information from his tax returns for the past six years.

Mr. Cameron has moved belatedly to try to defuse a furor over his finances in the wake of the release last week of leaked information about offshore companies in the so-called Panama Papers, which showed that his father, Ian, was a director of an offshore trust that paid no British taxes.

Mr. Cameron insisted that neither he nor his father had done anything illegal. He said all taxes due had been paid on proceeds from the fund and on an inheritance of 300,000 pounds, or about $424,000 according to current exchange rates, that he received when his father died in 2010.

The tax information Mr. Cameron released also showed that he received £200,000 (about $282,400) from his mother in 2011, on which he will pay no inheritance tax if she lives until 2018, but more questions were raised about whether those funds came from offshore accounts.

Mr. Cameron has said that he and his wife, Samantha, sold their interest in his father’s fund four months before he became prime minister in 2010 and that they had paid the full tax on the proceeds. They paid £12,497 (about $17,600) for it in 1997 and sold it for £31,500 (about $44,400), which just escaped capital gains taxes because the profits were split between him and his wife.

It is well known that Mr. Cameron comes from a wealthy family and went to elite schools, Eton and Oxford. He once worked in a public relations firm, so many Britons were surprised that he did not handle the revelations about his father in a more competent manner. The trickle of carefully worded, incremental statements before the fuller disclosure created the impression that he might have had something to hide.

Speaking at a Conservative Party gathering in London on Saturday, Mr. Cameron said he, not his staff, was to blame for mishandling the issue over the previous four days. “I could have handled this better,” he said. “I know there are lessons to learn, and I will learn them.

“And don’t blame No. 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers,” he said, using the address of the prime minister’s office. “Blame me.”

In the past, Mr. Cameron has condemned Britons who set up offshore accounts to avoid paying British taxes. On Saturday, he promised to release his tax information, but not his complete tax returns. Still, he is the only British prime minister to have done so.

The opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has not yet released his own tax returns, although he has promised to do so soon, saying that “there will be no surprises there.”

Mr. Corbyn has demanded that Mr. Cameron release his tax information dating to 2005, when he became the Conservative Party leader.

Thousands of people demonstrated outside the gathering on Saturday, demanding that Mr. Cameron resign and mocking the Panamanian law firm at the heart of the leak, with the slogan: “Mossack Fonseca: Because taxes are for poor people.”

The documents released by Mr. Cameron, produced by the English accounting firm RNS, showed that he had paid £75,898 ($107,170) on taxable income of £200,307 ($282,839) in the most recent tax year.

His 2014-15 income included his salary and expenses of £150,356 ($212,307), £46,899 ($66,222) from the annual rental of the Cameron family home in West London while he is living at Downing Street, and £3,052 ($4,309) in interest earned from savings on deposit in a London bank. He has said he and his wife own no shares in companies.

The previous year he paid £76,288 ($107,721) in taxes on taxable income of £200,735 ($283,444).

Before becoming prime minister, Mr. Cameron sold £140,000 (about $197,684) in shares, including those in the offshore fund.

In total, since 2009 he has paid £402,283 (about $568,036 at the current exchange rate) in taxes on taxable income of £1,078,008 ($1,522,180), an effective tax rate of 37 percent.

Still, the records released do not clarify whether Mr. Cameron profited from other tax-avoidance vehicles before 2010. British newspapers also criticized his failure to include the £500,000 (roughly $706,015) he received from his family estate in three tax-free payments over two years after his father’s death. Taking the payments this way, which is legal, avoided the payment of £70,000 (about $98,800) in capital gains taxes, according to The Mail on Sunday, which had the headline: “Cameron Tax Bill Dodge.”

On Sunday, Mr. Cameron also announced plans to create a task force to examine the involvement of British companies and individuals in funds and companies registered by Mossack Fonseca. In a statement, he said investigators led by the taxation authorities and the National Crime Agency would “deal with any wrongdoing relating to the Panama Papers.”

The damage to Mr. Cameron may be only temporary, but it could harm his efforts to recruit voters in a referendum scheduled for June 23 to support his position that Britain should remain in the European Union.

卡麥隆公布報稅資料 難滅火

為平息財務引發的政治風暴，英國首相卡麥隆十日公布個人報稅資料，創英國首相首例。不過，資料公布後，媒體仍窮追猛打，指出卡麥隆的母親在卡麥隆父親去世翌年，贈與卡麥隆廿萬英鎊（約台幣九百廿萬元），有躲避遺產稅之嫌。

根據資料，二○一○年卡麥隆父親過世後，母親瑪麗二○一○年五月和七月兩度贈與他各十萬英鎊，免課稅。根據法律，除非瑪麗在贈與後七年內去世，這兩筆贈與才需繳納百分之四十遺產稅，亦即八萬英鎊。瑪麗現年八十二歲，當她活到八十四歲，卡麥隆即不必繳遺產稅。

卡麥隆之前坦承，他在父親生前繼承卅萬英鎊。根據英國法令，繼承超過卅二萬五千英鎊，才須繳納遺產稅。在沒有更多資料前，目前難以斷定母親的贈與與父親的遺產有關。律師李維表示，他看不出其中涉及不法。

儘管如此，英國國人目前對卡麥隆從父親境外公司股權獲利相當不滿。數千民眾九日上街抗議，要求卡麥隆辭職或將個人財務交代清楚，部分示威者甚至說，他們會一直抗議到卡麥隆辭職。

卡麥隆坦承，在為自己財務釋疑上，確實處理不當，願承擔一切過錯，不是首相府顧問的錯。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/11/world/europe/david-cameron-panama-papers-tax-return.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20160411/c11britain/zh-hant/

Video：Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain admitted to having offshore trust holdings until just a few months before he ran for office.
http://nyti.ms/1SEFCMW

2016-04-11．聯合報．A2．焦點．編譯王麗娟