Talk:Paul Ruddock

“Tax avoider” - this is clearly meant to be a personally invidious adjective. I don’t propose to delete all mention of tax avoidance from this article, but the finger-pointing language has to go. Anyone who pays into a pension or an ISA is “avoiding” tax, but does that make them worthy of the label "tax avoider”? If not, what would? There is no generally agreed apolitical definition for a class of person who legally minimises their tax, so in my view the phrase "tax avoider” is being used here purely to denigrate, especially when you see the rest of the language used in the same edit.

The stated reason for his Knighthood was for services to arts, not philanthropy. He is listed as a philanthropist because everyone listed in the awards gets a job description, and Ruddock’s is “philanthropist" - but his award was for arts, not for philanthropy itself: there is no such award. https://data.gov.uk/dataset/honours-lists/resource/93ff355a-d23f-4471-812b-ba176c7e499f

Regarding "how much of this philanthropy was part of the tax avoidance scam uncovered by the daily mirror is unknown", in my opinion is accusation by unfounded implication. It is true to say that some of these schemes existed purely for legal tax avoidance, and I think it’s a matter of record that Ruddock invested in one, so that should stay in. But the Daily Mirror (which by the way is not generally recognised as viable source on Wikipedia) did not “uncover a tax avoidance scam”. It merely re-purposed a much older and well-known news story about 33,000 wealthy individuals being asked to pay extra tax after HMRC retrospectively ruled that certain film partnership investment schemes (which HMRC said were perfectly legal at the time) were suddenly deemed to be no longer deductible against tax. The purpose of these schemes was indeed to legally minimise tax, but it was all in full view of HMRC and there was no “scam” whatsoever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.117.44.10 (talk) 16:41, 12 April 2016 (UTC)