Tax on "Go" Shares
 

Don't rush into sending returns to the IR or paying accountants just yet.

BALPA are looking at the alleged tax loophole on the Go share issue and will make a press release "shortly", though they've been saying that for several days. Hopefully they'll come up with something before the end of the month...

Whichever way the decision falls this will save you money.

Hold on a bit longer and we should have a definitive answer to the crewroom topic of the month.

Who says BALPA does nothing for us?

Thanks for that - I've just sent the tax man a b****y great cheque:{ :{

Hmm, don't know why this has been posted on a public forum, but the fact is that everybody concerned is quite entitled to pay their accountant to deal with the matter.

An ex colleague and friend of mine was extremely pi**ed of to receive an unsolicited phone call from John Moore last week asking "what did he know?" about this issue. It disappoints me that Balpa see fit to phone a pilot rather than consult their own experts, and gives the impression that they want to take the credit for somebody else's hard work.

It's very simple - if you want to avoid possible fines and investigations then get your own tax adviser to look into it - if you want to wait for Balpa to sort it out you could be waiting a long time!

You have 16 days!

What the Rocket has written is indeed true - BALPA are yet again trying to get in on the act and take credit for the hard work of others. I have seen this time and time again of late.

The tax issue is for each individual to deal with. Whatever BALPA conclude I wouldn't be confident with their advice - especially considering the manner in which they are 'investigating' it.

Well, I don't know whats the matter with you two, standy/ron, but you dont seem to be speaking from a position of any factual knowledge of this at all.

Far from cashing in on someones hard work (however did you invent a bizarre idea like that?) BALPA have employed the same city accountant's firm to check this out as was used to get the shares paid gross to EVERYONE, MEMBERS AND NON MEMBERS ALIKE in the first place. (instead of having £11M's worth of their own hard work purloined by others...) and they have just published a 7 page statement which gives the tax situation chapter and verse, including full details of how to enter it into your tax return form yourself.

Said statement is now on its way to all members, so I'll not give any more detail here as you two are probably not members as seems likely from your mean-spirited and dog-in-a-manger attitude.

Collective tax affairs are very much part of BALPA's remit, as is any collective action to better the members; and often, as described above, a large numbers of non members too - the great majority of whom were office or ground staff and cabin crew. You two carry on with your individual approach by all means. May I assume that your conciences do not allow you to accept any benefits brought into your lives by the action of organizations to which you have not paid membership fees.

Anyone who has paid the IR bill already will find advice in the memo too. Members in reciept of Go share money who do not get this memo from BALPA had best contact them direct.

Thanks to BALPA for some very substantial work to the great benefit of members in this matter.

(And damn the begrudgers)

the boy John

Pardon me but I wasn't offering any "factual knowledge", and I didn't think I said anything that indicated there was something wrong with me!

You made an incorrect assumption that I'm not a member of Balpa, just like the memo they sent me which also makes a couple of incorrect assumptions.

If you want to quote me then I'd rather you did that correctly too - Balpa "cashing in" are your words not mine, but maybe there is an element of truth here, because their advise literature offers the services of BFS for £125!

You also state that Balpa's advise is going to save us all money, yet they are advising us that we have to pay the tax, so where exactly is the saving?

Unfortunately the Balpa memo has at least two mistakes and an incorrect assumption - it's all very well giving advise but it would be better for all concerned if it was sound advise.

John boy,

I still waste part of my salary on BALPA - but for how much longer I don't know.

As regards these 'tax issues' - investigations were made into this issue months ago. Only now that other people have found a possible way of avoiding tax are BALPA suddenly interested. Only now that the issue is high profile.

Believe me when I say that they didn't start the ball rolling and they haven't offered anything of value yet. They are months behind in their preparations - and the end of Jan is rushing this way.

They are 'cashing in' - as is their style.

Use the accountants who did the ground work - they deserve the reward - not BALPA. They are not all seeing and all knowing.

If BALPA are such a value to us shouldn't they LEAD and not chase??

BALPA mambers indeed! What on earth are you two doing in BALPA if this is your attitude? Your bitterness seems to have clouded your judgement. Forgive me for assuming you were not members. Nothing you have written suggests otherwise.

Cashing in? No no no, you've clearly not read either my post above or BALPA's. BALPA is not charging anyone for anything, so haw can they be "cashing in?" They have given you (us) considered expert ADVICE for free that, if you chose to believe it (and why shouldn't you) will save you the fine for non payment of tax due plus the bill from some another accountant who would have you believe otherwise. That sou ds like a considerable saving to me. Even if the other accountants are correct and BALPA is not, then you will get a rebate on the tax you've paid in error, so BALPA will still have saved you the accountant's fee.

The savings are therefore plainly obvious to anyone who choses to open his eyes to see them...

"Other people have found out ...suddenly interested...". You can hardly expect a firm of independant city tax experts to run a permanent investigation into the tax affairs of every BALPA member in the hope that they might find a loophole, can you? Thats hardly feasible, so why grump about it? BALPA took action soon enough when members alerted it to the possibility of a loophole, and did so in a way to save the members the cost of paying a very high accountants fee on a matter that was far from certain, and that the tax advisers have since said is not valid. Sounds like a pretty good service to me.

As BALPA charged nothing for this advice I'd say it is pretty clear who was "cashing in" on this business, and all the more so as there are potentially hundreds of clients with identical simple claims that would take minurtes each to process, and that we now find was (subject to the IR's acceptance) based on an incorrect premise anyway. Thats a lot of money for a lot of people to pay for a mistake, if that is what is eventually proved.

No. BALPA has done all a thoroughly good favour with this, and saved us a lot of money into the bargain, for a ZERO financial benefit to themselves.

Cashing in my @rse!

the boy John

Forgive me for thinking that when you started this topic you were under the impression that Balpa were about to issue advise that the tax was not due, and that they would therefore be saving us all large sums of money, otherwise what was there to get excited about and what was the purpose of your post?

Until very recently all of us were in the mindset of having to pay the tax, so any sensible person would treat any contrary advise with a deal of caution and scepticism, and would have already set aside the cash to pay the bill.

My tax affairs are no business of yours, Balpa or indeed easyJet, it's between my accountant (who I pay anyway!) the Inland Revenue and myself, period. Balpa themselves are not accountants and can only offer general advise, so it would be unwise to treat what they say as gospel; if that's what you want to do then fine, but remember that if you do file your own return, you'd better be sure you are doing it correctly, otherwise you are committing fraud.

Balpa's "advise" to pay up or get a fine is not actually saving me money is it? Perhaps they could issue a memo telling me to pay my TV Licence or get a fine, therefore saving me even more money!

Far from "going it alone", I'm simply dealing with my own business, thereby allowing Balpa to concentrate on more pressing matters viz. the 2004 T's & C's talks. Most employees of easyJet did not get share money, and they would be justifiably pretty hacked off if they thought Balpa were devoting scarce resources to a minority cause.

You know who I am so perhaps you'd be better continuing your rant as a Private Message, or by all means give me a call - my advise is free!

Ron, Oh dear!

If you misread my first post please don't take it out on me. The purpose, as is clear to most people, was to alert members to the fact that a resoulution to the endless rumours and mis/dis information flying around was about to be published. Most regarded this a useful and positive advance.

Again, had you read the info given you'd see that BALPA were passing on the report fron a top city firm of Tax Consultants, so the info is as far removed from "general advise" (sic) as is possible. It is, in fact, as sound Professional guidance as you will find, and clearly far more reliable than vague suggestions from unaccredited individuals that they may, or may not have found a loophole, further information either way upon payment of lots of money.

I have no idea why you think this has anything to do with easyjet, this is a Go matter, as is plainly obvious if you look at the title of this thread...
As it involves most employees of that company neither is it a minority issue, quite the opposite. Is BALPA's interest in EJ's 2004 Ts & Cs seen as "devoting scarce resources on minority issues "(ie just easyjet) to members employed by BA, or any other airline? Hardly, I don't think so.

Ron, you flatter yourself, I have no idea who you are. All I set out to do was to alert those affected that a definitive answer was available to an important matter, and had been thankful to our association that it had, for once, done something useful to a lot of members. I'm very sorry you chose to belittle that achievement and I cannot understand why. However if you want to continue your rant on a private message, fine.

Meantime. I'll continue to support BALPA wherever it makes progress for it's members, even in the face of the begrudgers who cannot bear to acknowledge their all too infrequent achievements (however small) when they do occur. I'll also holler when they let us down, but for God's sake, lets all be big enough to admit the small successes, even if we didn't personally benefit from them...