MSE News: Over half would do a Jimmy Carr on tax, or worse

System

The long term average is closer to 39% - 40%. This tends to rise during recession as unemploymen increases the welfare bill. Also with the private sector in (hopefully temporary) decline, even static public spending would increase as a share of GDP.

Stephen_Leak

anewman wrote: »

Tax avoidance is why we all pay so much tax on petrol. The common retort to "reduce tax on petrol!" is "what tax would you like to see rise in its place?" The answer is easy, end tax avoidance and you could reduce tax on fuel to 0p per litre, and still be better off.

And I have avoided some of this by buying a smaller, more fuel-efficient car. Is this "morally wrong"?

I also have an ISA. Both the ISA and JC's tax scheme were specifically designed to avoid paying tax. I see no difference between them. In fact, ISAs pay no tax, where JC's scheme did at least pay some. Is an ISA even more "morally wrong"?

Whatever happened to "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"?

System

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

And I have avoided some of this by buying a smaller, more fuel-efficient car. Is this "morally wrong"?

As I understand the JC / K2 scheme it essentially worked by 'disguising' earnings as a loan (even though there doesn't appear to be any obligation to repay).

Returning to your analogy - it would be like buying the smaller car and then pretending it was a moped to reduce the tax you pay.

antrobus

MSE_Helen wrote: »

"Over half of taxpayers would try every trick in the book to wriggle out of tax, or even break the law, our poll shows..."

And the other half were lying.:)

antrobus

lkate wrote: »

You sort of wonder how they don't have enough money considering everything that is taxed.....

Don't you mean 'we'?

lkate wrote: »

... I just don't get this whole "TAX THE RICH" crap...

OK, I'll explain it then.

If you are a political party with any progressive or left-wing type pretensions what you do is promise voters all kinds of goodies and if anyone asks how you're going to pay for it all, you tell them that you're going to 'TAX THE RICH', i.e. Someone Else Will Pay.

It usually works reasonably well until said political party actually gets into power, at which point everyone discovers that by 'THE RICH', they meant 'almost everybody'.

antrobus

patman99 wrote: »

If you disagree with Tax avoidance, then you will not be shopping in Tesco ...

Or buying anything that features the Virgin brand name. (And Richard Branson actually has a criminal conviction for tax evasion for another thing.)

patman99 wrote: »

..(they set up a Cayman Island base company, then transferred all of their property freeholds to it and rented them back. Avoiding over £495m of Tax every year)....

Well HMRC did very much the same thing with their own property freeholds, so who can blame them?

patman99 wrote: »

... or Boots (conveniently registered in Switzerland to avoid UK Tax).

Boots UK Limited as it is now known as is (as you can guess) a UK registered company which runs the UK based pharmacy chain and pays UK Corporation tax like any other UK company. The fact that it is a subsidiary of the Swiss based Alliance Boots is no more indicative of 'tax avoidance' than the fact that ASDA is a subsidiary of the US based Walmart.

antrobus

Thrugelmir wrote: »

...Apple pays an effective rate of 2.5% Corporation tax in the UK on over £2 billion of sales. ....

2.5% of £2 billion is £50 million. Given that the main rate of UK corporation tax is currently 24% , that would imply taxable profits of £208 million. Making a £208 million profit on importing and selling £2 billion worth of electronic goods from China seems reasonable enough to me.

Hint: companies pay corporation tax on profits not sales, so expressing corporation tax as a percentage of sales is always going to produce a 'shockingly' low figure.

Stephen_Leak

ceiberman wrote: »

<snip> Returning to your analogy - it would be like buying the smaller car and then pretending it was a moped to reduce the tax you pay.

No. That's lying. That's morally wrong. That's tax evasion. That's illegal.

System

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

No. That's lying. That's morally wrong. That's tax evasion. That's illegal.

Perhaps I was unnecessarily flippant, but im sure you got my point. if a loan doesn't have to be repaid there'd have to be some doubt as to whether it's a genuine loan in the first place. Afterall there are plenty of ways to legitimately take income out of a business. Or have I misunderstood how the scheme works.

LurkerTurnedPoster

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

And I have avoided some of this by buying a smaller, more fuel-efficient car. Is this "morally wrong"?

I hope not. I am about to go from a 2 litre engine, to a 1.8 litre engine.
Does anyone know how much I may save doing that please?