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

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Green Knight, exploitation is not what I'm talking about. You aleady know my views on that, especially if you followed my Zulu posts of 2010.

What I'm talking about is putting people in the pillory who have not broken the law and letting our senior politicians selectively throw rotten tomatoes at the ones they do not count as personal friends.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

The politicians should remain silent - that's very much a case of 'casting the first stone', and in any case, it's unprofessional for them to comment on individual cases. The tax-paying public, on the other hand, has a right to point out that it's not right for rich people to pay less taxes than poor people have to pay.

And as I said, just because an unjust law exist does not mean that keeping within that law is an ethical act. It's the politicians' duty to close those loopholes (much less for them to use them - cough, expenses and employing family members and getting paid for years' wage for a couple of hours work.

The only acceptable thing for a politician to say when it is pointed out that certain members of society elect not to pull their weight is 'we will try and fix this.' They're *very* quick when it comes to the little guys, but not so quick when it comes to their cronies.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I find it difficult to differentiate the tax paying public's protest from a media witch hunt when this is expressed by vilifying an individual on the frint page of the broadsheet press. The public has been worked up to an indignant frenzy by the media and seems more incensed than when Ken Dodd was actually brought to trial for tax evasion - though later acquitted.

The figures don't matter. The law does. We'll have to agree to differ on that point, but it seems we agree on the unprofessionalism of the politicians who comment inappropriately.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the media frenzy, so I don't know how bad it was. There's a line I'm not certain how to balance. On the one hand, I feel that public figures ought to be scrutinized more closely than ordinary citizens - hence when David 'rant against broken families' Cameron leaves his daughter at the pub, that's worth reporting, whereas if Jane and Joe Bloggs had misscheduled picking up theirs, it's not.

On the other hand, letting celebrity culture - whatever you report - drown out actual news (like the whole GCSE/O-level mess is a Very Bad Thing indeed, and focussing on one particular person instead of the thousands of possible targets is not fair on a purely personal basis.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

The BBC news on Radio4 this evening had as a postscript to a report on the Jimmy Carr affair a question that asked if politicians' tax returns should be made public. Oh no, was the (hasty) governmental reply. Some things should be kept private. You wouldn't want your tax return shoving through your neighbour's letterbox, would you?

Yeah, right!