Eleven million tax avoiding documents..

[unbeliever]

Should I dignify this with an answer?

 

I wouldn't.

It's not even correct. The rules and conventions of warfare existed long before WWII.

[Obelix]

Nazi war criminals you mean?

 

Ever heard of the Hague Conventions?

[spilldig]

I don't know where to start with these comments. You need to look into it before commenting. You really don't have a good comprehension of how tax is collected or tax legislation is implemented. I'm sorry to be harsh.

 

I do know one thing Ron, and that is that I dread thinking of the amount I've played since I started work in 1963, including the Wilson years when half my wages went in stoppages.

[foxy lady]

Ever heard of the Hague Conventions?

 

I didn't think the Hague Convention covered the way a country treats its own (German) cirtizens in times of war. But the Nuremberg trials did.

[Obelix]

I didn't think the Hague Convention covered the way a country treats its own (German) cirtizens in times of war. But the Nuremberg trials did.

 

The Nazi's didn't just gas their own Jews you know... and even if they did it was still a crime against humanity as determined in (I think) the second Hague convention. Also the Geneva protocol to the Hague forbade the use of chemical weapons regardless of the targets.

[RonJeremy]

I don't know where to start with these comments. You need to look into it before commenting. You really don't have a good comprehension of how tax is collected or tax legislation is implemented. I'm sorry to be harsh.

 

I do know one thing Ron, and that is that I dread thinking of the amount I've played since I started work in 1963, including the Wilson years when half my wages went in stoppages.

 

Absolutely. And some people were taxed at 102% of everything they earned over a certain level. Many overtaxed people just left the UK. Those that remained didn't bother to work and create enterprise and jobs.

The country was a basket case.

[L00b]

It's for a court to decide the legality when this is the case though. Not legislation to be written and applied retrospectively.

You seem to conflate the coming into existence of tax legislation with whether a tax loophole is legal or illegal: it is a wrong way of looking at the issue.

 

Tax statutes always pre-date the loopholes: the loopholes are created out of the interpretation of the existing legislation, and it's obviously always a self-serving interpretation for the tax dodgers. Whether that interpretation is legitimate or not, is what a Court decides and thus whether the loophole is 'legal' (i.e. still a legitimate interpretation toeing the spirit/letter of the tax statute) or not: the tax statutes don't change, the way they are interpreted does

 

Legislation is always written before a Court has ever had to interpret it.

 

In practical terms, it will certainly be 'built' on generations of earlier Court decisions, to assure continuity of legal principles and paradigms, but a new Statute is written and voted through by Parliamentaries, not Judges.

 

Eventually, the Court first applies that new legislation (instead of the 'old' legislation) to the facts of the first case to which that new legislation is relevant, and which is brought before a Court for the first time for a decision (have I belaboured the point enough/too much? )

 

That's why something can be considered legal as a matter of opinion, until a Court happens to interpret to the opposite of that opinion, and renders the something illegal after the fact. Same statutes. Different interpretation.

 

This has been, in a nutshell, the way of Common Law for centuries. I'm not hearing much shouts to do away with it

Or hell, write it and apply it from that date forwards and accept that you (the legislature) screwed up by not making it watertight in the first place.

No legislation has ever been, nor can ever be, considered "watertight", so I'm not sure what such an "acceptance" would achieve, relative to the status quo.

 

In practice, the issue is solved by having tiers of Courts (in UK, first instance, Appeal and Supreme), to guide and harmonise interpretation.

Edited April 7, 2016 by L00b

[ricgem2002]

I do know one thing Ron, and that is that I dread thinking of the amount I've played since I started work in 1963, including the Wilson years when half my wages went in stoppages.

 

Absolutely. And some people were taxed at 102% of everything they earned over a certain level. Many overtaxed people just left the UK. Those that remained didn't bother to work and create enterprise and jobs.

The country was a basket case.

but even when that level was reduced to an acceptable level these parasites still try and get away with not paying it

[RonJeremy]

Absolutely. And some people were taxed at 102% of everything they earned over a certain level. Many overtaxed people just left the UK. Those that remained didn't bother to work and create enterprise and jobs.

The country was a basket case.

but even when that level was reduced to an acceptable level these parasites still try and get away with not paying it

 

But the result is more is collected.

When you say they are parasites, some people pay so much in tax that they feel they have paid MUCH MUCH more than their fair share and look for ways of reducing their tax burden. It's not like genuine parasites that live off others, without contributing anything.

[unbeliever]

but even when that level was reduced to an acceptable level these parasites still try and get away with not paying it

 

It depends very much on one's definition of reasonable.

 

We all depend on public services and they have to be paid for. The poorer are generally more dependent on public services (welfare payments etc), but we all need them to an extent.

 

The "rich" are notionally asked for about 50% of their income. That pays for the public services they use plus the public services used by many others on lower incomes (who do not contribute at all, or not enough to cover the public services they use).

Even if the rich take steps to reduce that a little, it's never reduced to the point where they're not still covering many times over the cost of the public services they use.

 

Now when you're sharing a society with people who are heavily subsidising you, how much of a hard time are you willing to give them because they try and trim the subsidy a little within the law?

Do you really want them to leave? How do we fund public services if they do?

 

By all means change the tax law when it's cynically exploited. Get as much out of the rich as is practical. That doesn't always mean the highest rate by the way. don't try to get more even it seems "fair" to you, because you need them to stay.

Edited April 7, 2016 by unbeliever