Taxation by moral blackmail? Huh?

[jacey]

Is it just me?

The BBC news this morning said the Jimmy Carr had agreed to cease using LEGAL tax avoidance schemes to reduce his tax bill because HM government is saying that to LEGALLY avoid paying tax is morally reprehensible.

But surely the law is the law. When I was on a business course many years ago it was the accepted theory that you use every legal trick in the book to avoid paying taxes because - well - they're LEGAL. The mantra was that 'tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is not'. People pay accountants to find legal ways of reducing their tax bill.

I'm sorry, but if there's a tax loophole the government doesn't like, they should plug it - legally.

I know Jimmy Carr is probably pretty wealthy, and that those of us who are not sometimes really like the idea of a wealthy person being forced to part with money, but if the law applies to one person, it applies to all.

I want to know how the government has the right to name and shame people who are not actually breaking the law. When has the government agreed to set aside the law of the land in order to take a decision which was morally right?

I'd like to see the government looking at a low income family and saying: "Ah, Mr and Mrs Smith, I see that we took £2,556.78 from you in tax last year and that having paid this your five children had to wear shoes that were too small for them because you couldn't afford new ones. We agree that we had the law on our side, but we feel it was morally wrong to take this money from you, so we're giving it back."

Yeah, right!

Comments

[charlieallery.livejournal.com]

I have to say I'm with you on this one. Though I'm not sure it's the government doing the naming and shaming so much as the media - after all, he was part of a scheme that a lot of people were using, but he's probably the only name that people would recognise, so that's who the papers reported on. Reporting on people you've never heard of is a non-story.

And of course, somehow, because people have paid to be entertained by him, they seem to think that gives them a right to be outraged by what he's done with the money he's earned. It's not like he's a public servant whose wages come out of our taxes in the first place. I'm just wondering if anyone will dare to look at what the F1 drivers do with the money they're paid - though most of them are resident in Monaco or the Isle of Man and so have reduced tax bills.

As you say, part of paying for an accountant, rather than just hoarding receipts for yourself, is having them find legal ways to save you money. I do wonder if he could have sued for defamation, given that he hadn't broken the law. Oh dear, we really do hate people with money here, don't we? No wonder they all live elsewhere.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

It may be the media who stirred it all up but the comments from Con and Leb Dem politicians is pretty inflammatory:

David Cameron said in an interview with ITV News: "Some of these schemes we have seen are quite frankly morally wrong."

The Liberal Democrats' deputy leader, Simon Hughes, said it was "completely unacceptable" for stars to avoid paying proper rates of tax." (Note he didn't say it was wrong for others to avoid tax!)

In his Budget speech in March, Chancellor George Osborne described illegal tax evasion and legal but aggressive tax avoidance as "morally repugnant".

And for once a bit of common sense from Ed Miliband who said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality. I think what the politicians need to do is - if the wrong thing is happening - change the law."