Offshore Ownership of the UK

September 15, 2015 5:57 AM

"OVER the last year Private Eye has revealed the extent of ownership of British land by offshore companies, generally for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth. Now the Eye has created an easily searchable online map of these properties, revealing for the first time the British property interests of companies based in tax havens from Panama to Luxembourg, and from Liechtenstein to the South Pacific island of Niue. Using Land Registry data released under Freedom of Information laws, and then linking more than 100,000 land title register entries to specific addresses, the Eye has tracked all leasehold and freehold interests acquired by offshore companies between 2005 and 2014."
posted by marienbad (7 comments total)

Interestingly, quite a lot of these (at least in my area) are roofs leased to a Hong Kong company called Salcon because that was the deal for getting solar panels fitted for free.
posted by pipeski at 6:21 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Just back from Bermuda, where a taxi driver told me that tourism, their big income, now also has many insurance companies setting up their home base, though law there limits buildings to not more than 7 stories high. What irks me is when conservatives badmouth "welfare queens," but seem to accept tax evasion by the wealthy and the corporations.
posted by Postroad at 6:25 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

A lot of these seem to be "Airspace above..." and some solar company.
Better if they were locally owned solar companies I suppose, but maybe it's not as damning as it first looks?
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:50 AM on September 15, 2015

Coming next: Laws to protect the privacy of the hard-working average middle-class citizen, who shouldn't have his property details exposed for all to see. Nothing to do with exposure of ownership by the wealthy, nothing at all.

I wonder if all the "airspace above" bits look more significant than they are because they cover a lot of land area. I expect that if you did size-by-dollar-value, downtown London would look a lot bigger on the map.
posted by clawsoon at 7:03 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Just back from Bermuda-

Ah, Bermuda! Famous for limiting foreign ownership of property.

England could, I expect, do the same, if Labour ever gets back in.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:04 AM on September 15, 2015

They didn't do the Isle of Man in this, sadly, because I was hoping to see if it tied back to this.
posted by nubs at 2:05 PM on September 15, 2015

Ah, Bermuda! Famous for limiting foreign ownership of property.

Australia has been doing that lately. They have sold five properties lately, but also discovered a number of "overseas students" who have never filed tax returns, but have purchased multi-million properties.
According to whoever is treasurer today.
posted by Mezentian at 4:19 AM on September 16, 2015