Stephen Timms, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, told parliament the other day:
"This Government will not tolerate tax avoidance or tax evasion in any form, and will act promptly to tackle both of these."
Same old goverment spin of linking avoidance with evasion:
1 Avoidance is legal, taxpayers have every right to arrange their affairs (legally) so as to minimise their payments to the state.
2 What exactly is "avoidance in any form"? The use of ISA's? Tax planning?
Timms has set himself quite a task, I wonder if he is legally, or intellectually, capable of living up to his statement?
I wonder if his fellow MPs, many of whom practice tax avoidance themselves, are in a position to support him?
Tax does have to be taxing.
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Recently I had occasion to look at VAT Guide 700. Section 2.3 states “Tax avoidance is not illegal. However, it can give a business an unfair tax advantage over others, and puts at risk tax simplification measures. We have to take action to counter this and will continue to do so. That action includes the use of litigation, or the introduction of new legislation.”
ReplyDeleteIt shouldn’t, but it does stagger me that this could ever be included within a document published by a government body that has a positive duty to protect the rights of individuals.
"It shouldn’t, but it does stagger me that this could ever be included within a document published by a government body that has a positive duty to protect the rights of individuals."
ReplyDeleteThis government is not interested in protecting the rights of individuals eg; RIPA used by councils, DNA database, CCTV, destinations of all emails and phone calls to be logged/stored etc.
I dont think they want the British to think - to budget, save or to do tax-planning, though
ReplyDeletethe MPs and their accountants and solicitors certainly did a lot of tax-planning when inter alia buying 2nd homes.
And what about complicated company setups and renaming etc and complicated laws and the difficulty for the public in even finding the real laws (vs lists of amendments) and the renaming of departments and the lack of listing of conflicts of interests by politicians and those who can afford a good lawyer. Do they realize that they are behaving like the downside of some tax havens they don't like?
People need privacy - some will exploit that bad for reasons, some will use privacy for good reasons.
Are locks on doors allowed these days?