Facebook comments (II)
A response to this thoughtful and rather beautiful sonnet on a childhood home no longer owned.
On which, however, a lawyer commented: "Much more creative than any of your former colleagues' tax planning and far more emotive :-)"
The house? It's still our home; it's just
Been transferred to a Guernsey trust---
---The freehold interest, at least.
Because, you see, it's now been leased
As several fractional estates
At plausibly commercial rates
(According to our tame surveyors)
To Cayman Island firms, whose layers
Of cross-held shares and debt make losses
So deep that their respective bosses
Have each of them requested me
To occupy his part, and see
His rivals do not interfere
With what's not theirs. And while I'm here
On business, I can charge a fee,
And use the bits of house for free,
And you, of course, can live with me.
All just a little legal praxis
To save on inconvenient taxes.
So when my soul some day "offshores"
All this, my child, can then be yours.
On which, however, a lawyer commented: "Much more creative than any of your former colleagues' tax planning and far more emotive :-)"
The house? It's still our home; it's just
Been transferred to a Guernsey trust---
---The freehold interest, at least.
Because, you see, it's now been leased
As several fractional estates
At plausibly commercial rates
(According to our tame surveyors)
To Cayman Island firms, whose layers
Of cross-held shares and debt make losses
So deep that their respective bosses
Have each of them requested me
To occupy his part, and see
His rivals do not interfere
With what's not theirs. And while I'm here
On business, I can charge a fee,
And use the bits of house for free,
And you, of course, can live with me.
All just a little legal praxis
To save on inconvenient taxes.
So when my soul some day "offshores"
All this, my child, can then be yours.