"clever financial products"

Paul_Herring

.. but then we get to those shades of grey I mentioned to earlier...

Law: Black and White
Newspeak (in an allusion of my sig):

• I am legally paying all the tax I have to
• You are legally avoiding tax,
• He is immorally avoiding tax,
• They are illegally evading tax.

Aegis

Paul_Herring wrote: »

.. but then we get to those shades of grey I mentioned to earlier...

Law: Black and White
Newspeak (in an allusion of my sig):

• I am legally paying all the tax I have to
• You are legally avoiding tax,
• He is immorally avoiding tax,
• They are illegally evading tax.

Probably useful (albeit less concise) to go with specifics rather than using the now-confusing labels the government insists on:

• I am making use of pensions and ISAs to avoid tax
• You are also using VCTs and EISs to further reduce your tax bill
• He is making use of a highly complex structure in order to receive income tax relief of 110% on a renovation project (where the normal limit for said relief is, say, 50%)
• They are failing to declare income they have earned on a foreign investment despite being UK resident and domiciled

In essence the game has changed from being a case of avoiding whatever you can by any means necessary into the situation where all reliefs and allowances are only to be used for their intended purpose. Ideally we would have new laws and new labels, but as I mentioned above that would be very difficult indeed.

JezR

'Tax planning' seems to be the phrase for the 'legitimate' end of the spectrum these says. That will probably go down as well in due course needing something else to be invented.