Coalition to Launch TAX Evasion Clampdown

[Guest sibon]

It's not the uber rich that you need to worry about because they will just leave the UK if their tax advisors can't help them - which they will be able to because that is what they do and they are very good at it and get paid a lot to do it.

 

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We should let them go. In fact, I'll drive them to the airport, along with their tax advisers. We wouldn't really miss all those hugely talented investment experts who almost crippled the country. The rest will do the same work from abroad and pay just as much tax to us.

 

I'm all for a crackdown on tax cheats, benefit cheats and anyone else who thinks that they can freeload. I see no moral difference between evading tax, fraudulently claiming benefit or stealing an old lady's pension.

 

You, on the other hand, seem to frequently champion tax evaders. Is there a reason?

 

Is your washing machine working again, by the way?

[Tony]

My washing machine is fine thanks. I certainly don't champion tax evasion but that is because I understand the difference between evasion (illegal) and avoidance (legal and to be encouraged).

 

The reason is crystal clear. I trust you to spend your money more wisely than government. The less that they have the richer that you will be and the harder they will have to work to do the essential stuff that we need them to do.

 

To 'clamp down on tax avoidance' is a ridiculous oxymoron. If it's legal, it's legal. The money that is saved will go back into the economy to be spent by the people who saved it and government can keep its inefficient thieving little mitts off it instead of investing it in another pointless HMG computer system.

 

Like you I'm happy for tax cheats to be chased but if HMG tries to eliminate the black economy it will fail because every nation relies on it for various reasons too dry to go into here and because quite frankly we all like a bit of a 'discount for cash mate'.

 

HMG and Danny Alexander know all this and that's why he's being a bit silly with his attention grabbing headline, especially when he deliberately confuses evasion and avoidance. I expect something more considered from the Treasury and its representatives. I'm fed up with government by sensation, I want it to behave like a grown up.

[Wildcat]

My washing machine is fine thanks. I certainly don't champion tax evasion but that is because I understand the difference between evasion (illegal) and avoidance (legal and to be encouraged).

 

The reason is crystal clear. I trust you to spend your money more wisely than government. The less that they have the richer that you will be and the harder they will have to work to do the essential stuff that we need them to do.

 

To 'clamp down on tax avoidance' is a ridiculous oxymoron. If it's legal, it's legal. The money that is saved will go back into the economy to be spent by the people who saved it and government can keep its inefficient thieving little mitts off it instead of investing it in another pointless HMG computer system.

 

Like you I'm happy for tax cheats to be chased but if HMG tries to eliminate the black economy it will fail because every nation relies on it for various reasons too dry to go into here and because quite frankly we all like a bit of a 'discount for cash mate'.

 

HMG and Danny Alexander know all this and that's why he's being a bit silly with his attention grabbing headline, especially when he deliberately confuses evasion and avoidance. I expect something more considered from the Treasury and its representatives. I'm fed up with government by sensation, I want it to behave like a grown up.

 

So it all boils down to you having an ideological belief that the private sector is good, public is bad... Hmmm there is plenty of evidence that is not the case. The railways cost more privatised than they did under public ownership, many privatised areas of the public sector have gone bust and had to be renationalised. Even much of the banks are now under public ownership because of the mess they have made. The simple way of looking at it is how do you want to pay for a service being delivered? do you want the state to run it directly or private sector to deliver the same thing with the additional cost of keeping its shareholders sweet? Ideology should have no place in such calculations, especially when the assertion private is cheaper is simply false propaganda on behalf of the big 4.

 

As for tax avoidance... how can you justify the setting up of webs of virtual companies to shift money around to exploit loopholes to avoid paying tax? That may be legal, because a loophole has been found but it is also clearly an attempt to avoid paying what Parliament has determined to be a fair contribution to society. It is also clearly anti-social and unethical. The sooner we change the system to make it an obligation for companies to demonstrably have set out to pay their fair share of tax the sooner Tax Avoidance can be made illegal and the business freeloaders that damage our society and increase the tax burden on everyone else can be dealt with to create a fairer society.

[Tony]

I don't have any ideology except that your money is yours and my money is mine. Together we need HMG to do stuff that we can't do ourselves. I'm quite able to do the other stuff for myself thanks and I don't need them to put their sneck in.

 

It's not much of an ideology is it? More of a way of life.

 

What's yours? It looks and smells like state control.

[milquetoast1]

In the main, I agree with Tony above.

 

I think we can all agree that tax evasion, when someone deliberately fails to declare earnings or a millionaire MP sticks the cost of a new trouser press on expenses, is theft from the taxpayer. It is wrong and those culpable should be punished.

 

But to deliberately lump legal tax avoidance in with illegal tax evasion as "unacceptable" and "morally indefensible" is disingenuous pandering to the current jealous nature of the electorate.

 

Tax avoidance is merely finding ways of reducing your bill by using legal allowances introduced by the Government, often with the intention of modifying our behaviour.

 

Making pension contributions (prudently saving for your old age so that the State did not have to support you), or by using EIS schemes (providing risk capital for SMEs), selling your car and using public transport, making Gift Aid contributions, reducing your alcohol/tobacco intake, ISA savings etc, are all legitimate ways of reducing your tax bill which actually have a valid purpose.

 

If Danny Alexander does not like the tax system, he can change it. It might not make the UK a better place by starving SMEs of capital that the banks are unwilling to provide, or by discouraging folks from providing for their old age, but it might close what you deem to be loopholes for those horrible rich people. But what on earth gives him the right to suggest that someone who does not volunteer to pay more tax than he thinks they should, under a system that he runs and can change, is in the same league as someone who just fails to declare their earnings?

 

[PC Brigade]

I don't have any ideology except that your money is yours and my money is mine.

 

Its quite obvious that you do have an anti-tax and anti-government ideology.

 

Can you explain why you think it is ok for extremely rich individuals to use complicated front companies and tax loopholes to avoid paying fair taxes?

 

Your arguement of 'if its legal, its legal' doesn't hold water - the government should look to close these legal loopholes, and prosecute those who seek to exploit them.

[Wildcat]

I don't have any ideology except that your money is yours and my money is mine. Together we need HMG to do stuff that we can't do ourselves. I'm quite able to do the other stuff for myself thanks and I don't need them to put their sneck in.

 

It's not much of an ideology is it? More of a way of life.

 

What's yours? It looks and smells like state control.

 

Is it ideological to say there should be an evidence based assessment of who delivers what service and at what cost to us? Maybe...

 

but as ideological viewpoints go it is also more pragmatic than simply the ideological demand for the scaling back of the state because you characterise its involvement as some sort of pernicious 'state control'. I would much rather a democratic and accountable state had control of important parts of our infrastructure than private vested interests outside of our control, but am prepared if it can run more cheaply for the state to outsource functions... where there is a clear business case, but only where there is one.

 

You really don't seem to get it. You set up straw man bogey men with loaded language to defend and argue an ideological and damaging viewpoint that costs us more and that dis-empowers us.

[Tony]

PC Brigade, you are right except that you can't prosecute people who exploit loopholes. It's either right or wrong in law.

 

Wildcat, you are wrong. You seem to like the idea of somebody else being in charge. I don't, I trust you even if you don't.

[L00b]

Strange that we never hear statements like this when Benefit Cheats are being discussed rather than Tax Evasion / Avoidance.

No, as it might make the electorate use a couple of braincells and fuel still more unrest

 

Tax Evasion is not declaring, nor paying, what a person legally owes in taxes. Illegal by any measure of common sense.

 

Benefits cheating is getting a bigger share of those taxes paid by taxpayers, than a person's circumstances entitle them to. Illegal by any measure of common sense.

 

Tax Avoidance is declaring and paying only the legal minimum of what a person owes in taxes. For the benefit of Wildcat, "legal" above means "enacted or sanctioned by Parliament"... in the exact same manner as the "fair contribution to society"

 

It's these 2 different sets of morality which fuel the divisions between the rich & the poor.

It's sensationalist, populist media, aided in no small part by the now-prevalent "Gvt-by-headline" system, which fuel the divisions between the rich & the poor.

[milquetoast1]

For the avoidance of doubt, L00b means "tax avoidance" in his 4th paragraph above.