Bancos acusados de evasão fiscal / Banks accused of tax avoidance

O banco inglês Lloyds TSB é acusado na Justiça pelo Tesouro Britânico de usar uma subsidiária para drenar centenas de milhões de libras por esquemas estrangeiros para evitar o pagamento de impostos. O Lloyds foi um dos bancos que recebeu dinheiro público na crise econômica.

Grandes empréstimos a instituições financeiras americanas foram disfarçados de investimentos comerciais para fins fiscais, alega a HM Revenue & Customs, a receita federal britânica. Como resultado, o dinheiro dos acordos foi tratado de maneira diversa em cada lado do Atlântico. O governo britânico possui 43% doLloyds.

A questão é que milhões de libras de receitas, havidas no Reino Unido como distribuição de lucros de investimentos nos EUA, foram beneficiados com isenção de impostos, na crença governamental de que teriam sido tributados nos Estados Unidos. Ocorre que lá, os valores também teriam sido considerados livres de impostos. A prática é conhecida entre tributaristas como "double dipping". Outros bancos também são suspeitos de praticar esse esquema.

Lloyds TSB Bank accused in court by the Treasury of using a subsidiary to pour hundreds of millions into transatlantic tax avoidance schemes. Lloyds is one of the banks bailed out by the government.

Huge loans to American financial institutions were disguised as commercial investments for tax purposes, it is alleged in a case against the bank being brought by HM Revenue & Customs, a department of the Treasury. As a result, the money from the deals was treated differently for tax purposes on each side of the Atlantic.

The revelation of the court action comes on the day that Lloyds TSB executives appear before the Treasury select committee to explain their role in the current banking crisis. Lloyds Banking Group is 43% owned by the government.

The sting of the HMRC case is that millions of pounds of income, received in the UK as distributions from US investments, was granted tax relief on the basis that US tax had already been paid.

But in the US, where the cash was treated as interest payments on a debt, it was also granted tax relief. This type of practice is known to tax experts as "double dipping".

He said these were "two instances of the use of a tax avoidance scheme which was used by several UK banks".

The Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, said last night: "What is seriously shocking about these latest revelations is the way they demonstrate how a bank in which the government is the largest shareholder has been systematically avoiding paying taxes to the British government. It is amazing that the regulator doesn't seem to have spotted that there was a problem with large amounts of money going round in a circle with no other purpose than avoiding taxation. Now that the government is the dominant shareholder, it must stop these tax avoidance activities forthwith."

Lloyds banking chiefs may be asked by MPs at the committee hearing today whether involvement in tax avoidance has been disclosed to the government, and if the Treasury required the bank to end tax avoidance as part of the deal to get state support.

The OECD published a report last year, largely drafted by experts from the UK, which revealed that British banks were generating "very large profits" from such stratagems.

Lloyds made large loans to AIG, the subsequently collapsed US insurance group, and Bank of America. The identities of the US partners in the schemes emerged in Lloyds' subsidiaries filings at Companies House.