Thread by @JolyonMaugham

Back in the day, I used to argue tax avoidance cases in court. Those cases were about making 'investments', usually in films, which would generate a loss (of eg 100) for accounting purposes which you would match against your income (of eg 100) so you paid tax on 0 not on 100.

These arrangements, which were politely called 'structured finance', were put together by clever financial engineers for a cut of the total investment of, maybe 5%, which they shared with the IFAs of the individuals who had those 100s of income they didn't want to pay tax on.

Anyway, they made some strange film choices - I saw a scheme where the poorer the box office of the film the better off the individual because he* got more losses for the same money - but the films they chose always had one thing in common.

The thing the films had in common was, they were expensive. Why skim 5% off a film worth £10m if you could skim 5% off a film worth £100m. More money to go around for the financial engineers and IFAs, right?

I think of this sometimes when I look at the staggering amount of PPE we over-purchased, billions and billions through the sleazy and illegal VIP lane that Ministers lied, and lie, about to the media, to the Courts, to Parliament, basically to everyone.

They had consumption data showing how much PPE they were using, so why did they carry on purchasing so much in circumstances where they knew (at least if they cared to look) that they wouldn't need it?

Did they do it for the skim? The more they bought the more skim?

"Marron also revealed the department had bought 768m eye protectors, when the NHS only needs 6m a month."

That's more than ten years supply (and my calcs at the time suggested it wasn't the worst example). theguardian.com/world/2022/mar…