Tax avoidance film scheme ruled unviable

The scheme was marketed by Goldcrest Pictures Limited to some of society's wealthiest people and involved buying and selling film rights. Established in 1977, Goldcrest has financed, produced and/or distributed a large number of successful films, including Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, The Killing Fields and A Room with a View. In one example of the scheme's use, hedge fund manager Patrick Degorce bought the rights to two feature films from a British Virgin Islands-based Goldcrest company for an artificially-inflated figure of £21.9m. But Degorce, in fact, paid only £4.8m of his own money...