Osborne discovers that the rich avoid paying tax

[teamsaint]

If you worked there as a manager you might know better. If you worked there as a director, you would know better.

Of course government department prepare statistics based on departmental interests.

so governments DO choose statistics to support their political agenda !!
You know I though they just might.just a hunch, but it seems they do.

[Beef Oven]

so governments DO choose statistics to support their political agenda !!
You know I though they just might.just a hunch, but it seems they do.

Yes, it seems that way

[Flosshilde]

Having said all that, most people feel less "got at" by being expected to pay taxes if they can be made successfully to feel that they're getting a decent return on their investment; ask most Finns who pay almost half of their incomes in taxes but don't feel any particular reason to complain about being expected to do so because of what they perceive that they and the society within which they function get out of doing so.

Ah, so you are arguing for higher government spending on social security, health, education, etc? & what exactly do people like the 'Taxpayers' Alliance' always complain about? Oh yes, too much being spent on social security, benefits, etc. Like most of your arguments about tax - nonsense.

Actually, I wasn't making any comment about the ethics of tax avoidence - just astonished at gormless George's astonishment that the rich indulge in it.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well tax is after the main event innit, decades of self employment leads me to the conclusion that tax is a problem when you have earnings etc .... the problem with the rich is how they get it in the first place and what they do to protect their privileged access to loot .... and then pay as little or no tax as they can get away with by any means they can get away with ...[i do think you have to be stunningly thick to get nicked for evasion etc] ... the issue is really before taxation ... now was boy george trying to put smoke in our eyes by raising the taxation envy demons?

i mean just look at the average CORPOCAT £alary or Banker Bonu$ .... your eyes would bleed if you knew how private companies steal from and defraud the NHS and other taxpayer funded bounties for our entrepreneurial friends ... i mean there was not just the one £1000 Christmas Tree for the one Christmas now was there? Christmas is an everyday feast 24.7 innit ....

[Lateralthinking1]

I don't know if anyone noticed but the last company in the FTSE 100 with a final salary pension scheme announced this week that the scheme would close. This news is interesting because it is also the case that 99% of those companies use tax havens.

If tax haven users are unwilling or unable to provide adequate benefits to their staff, then there is even less of an argument on shall we say quality grounds for allowing them to be. We might as well just tax them in the same way as we do barrow boys.

[ahinton]

Ah, so you are arguing for higher government spending on social security, health, education, etc? & what exactly do people like the 'Taxpayers' Alliance' always complain about? Oh yes, too much being spent on social security, benefits, etc. Like most of your arguments about tax - nonsense.

To you, perhaps - but then that's your prerogative, just as it is to read a post selectively and with insufficient concentration on its contents; I wasn't actually "arguing" for any such thing in what I wrote - or indeed for anything else, for that matter, since the point of that post was merely to observe that some people's attitude to paying taxes is different from others to the extent that, when some of them feel that what they pay is generally being well used and perceptibly and consistently benefits society as a whole, they tend to feel rather less aggrieved about it than do others who see too great a proportion of their taxes being spent in a profligate and inefficient manner and generally wasted.

If I were indeed to "argue" here for anything in terms of how the government of the day should spend its tax revenues, it would be far more along the lines of what it should not spend (so much of) them on rather than what it should; defence spending is perhaps only one of the worst examples of how people's taxes are wasted and this affects those on the highest rates just as it does those who only pay the lowest.

Actually, I wasn't making any comment about the ethics of tax avoidence - just astonished at gormless George's astonishment that the rich indulge in it.

I hadn't assumed that you were making such comment, although I cannot but agree with you about Gideon's extraordinary gaffe here. That said, almost all of us indulge in tax avoidance of one kind or another, as I've noted previously, some of it government sponsored (pension contribution tax relief, ISAs, personal allowances for income capital gains and inheritance taxes et al); determining to what extent anyone can genuinely be said to have "avoided" tax presumes there to be a hard and fast determinant of exactly how much tax any individual "should" pay, which is impossible in practice for many reasons, not least of which is that the government of the day moves its taxation goalposts all the time.

[scottycelt]

Surely the remarkable thing about our Chancellor of the Exchequer is not so much that he is reported to be 'het up' about how many of the rich are avoiding tax, but that he has apparently just noticed that they do. Sorry, I really don't believe that ... after all, he is a very rich man himself ... it simply smacks to me of leaked populist propaganda from a politician desperately anxious to repair some of the self-inflicted damage following his recent budget.

On the tax point itself, ahinton is correct that it's not just the rich who take advantage of tax-avoidance schemes. However, it is only the rich who are able to employ lawyers to discover all sorts of loopholes and foreign bank-accounts to dodge their tax responsibilities, and when we are told that some of them actually pay proportionally less in tax than the less well-off, then, in these 'we are all in this together' days, something is very, very seriously wrong?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

so governments DO choose statistics to support their political agenda !!

...but only when it suits them. Not, however, when they want to tell huge fibs about public service pensions bein "unaffordable", but then refusing to release the documentation that would show how contributions have exceeded payments by many billions, and that the "black hole" is merely a cover-up for the fact that they have spent the money on other things. They've only just got their hands on the Royal Mail pension and they've spent it already.

[Flosshilde]

To you, perhaps - but then that's your prerogative, just as it is to read a post selectively and with insufficient concentration on its contents; I wasn't actually "arguing" for any such thing in what I wrote

I know you weren't, in that particular post, but, as you say (

as I've noted previously

) you have, extensively, in at least one thread on tax. & lumping legirtimate government schemes to encourage savings, pension contributions, etc with dodgy schemes dreamt up by accountants to avoid paying income tax is, as I said, nonsense.

[Lateralthinking1]

"The chancellor's surprise is about as convincing as Captain Renault's explanation for shutting down Rick's bar in Casablanca"

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/e...ock-casablanca

His comment actually was:

"I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right"

The parts not in bold could have been drafted by Vince Cable.

But I think that there is also an uncomfortable fact here for any of us to the left of current Conservatism. We might view Cameron as the most right wing Prime Minister to date and George as some way to the right of him.

They probably do not see it like that themselves. Even Maude would no doubt consider himself to be a moderate. The fact is that their reference points are different. Their scale is one on which those much further to the right loom large.

There are arguably plenty who would do away with taxation altogether. Very reluctant as I am to say it, this is partially a statement from the Chancellor which shows that he is at least prepared to accept taxation as a general principle.

[Simon]

so governments DO choose statistics to support their political agenda.

Everybody chooses the statistics that support their own point of view. Be a bit daft not to, wouldn't it?

[ahinton]

I know you weren't, in that particular post, but, as you say () you have, extensively, in at least one thread on tax. & lumping legirtimate government schemes to encourage savings, pension contributions, etc with dodgy schemes dreamt up by accountants to avoid paying income tax is, as I said, nonsense.

Then the likes of Paul Lewis (the presenter of Moneybox on R4, not the pianist) must be doing likewise - and he is far from alone. By no means all of the schemes dreamt up by accountants, tax lawyers and others are "dodgy" in any case and many of them involve honest declarations to HMRC. Government schemes to encourage savings don't cut a whole lot of ice with those whose incomes are too low to enable them to be able to afford to take advantage of them, but these, pension contribution tax relief, income tax personal allowances for those with less than six-figure annual incomes, personal capital gains tax allowances, the IHT threshold and many other arrangements, allowances and facilities are still tax avoidance means, the only difference being that the government provides those means to avoid tax free of charge to the taxpayer without his/her having to shell out fees to professional for tax avoidance advice. Assuming your p[oint to be that government sponsored tax avoidance is OK but other tax avoidance is not, here's an example. A man purchases a piece of antique furniture for £10,000; he later discovers its sale value to be in excess of four times what he paid for it. He then puts it into the joint names of himself and his wife and then sells it on March 31 for £43,000 with half paid up front and the rest a week later. How much capital gains tax does he pay? It's called tax avoidance and, in this instance, is government sponsored, but I wonder if you'd consider that example moral or immoral?

[teamsaint]

Everybody chooses the statistics that support their own point of view. Be a bit daft not to, wouldn't it?

er, that is exactly what I said, Simes.

It really doesn't make it right for governments to blatantly misuse statistics, though, does it?
(all governments, not just the current rabble).

Although It would be fine if the Socialist workers government were doing it, obviously. Laudable, in fact !!

[kernelbogey]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2012/apr/10/georgeosborne-taxavoidance

[MrGongGong]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...e-taxavoidance

puurfect