Paradise Papers

Tromking

economic wrote: »

what does morally even mean when it comes to tax? i pay tax because i have to, not because i think its for the greater good of society.

I do get that.

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

Tromking wrote: »

I do get that.

Ignore people slating you on here saying that you dont care about avoiding tax because you dont earn "enough". Surely if they earn enough they wont worry about paying their taxes.

singhini

I had a couple of special brews so I'm up for a chat now.


I too avoid tax by using ISA' s and putting money into pensions.


I also actively avoid tax by buying VAT exempt or zero rated VAT items (i.e. plain biscuits as opposed to chocolate biscuits).


I'm fed up with being penalised for rising to my potential (i.e. the more I earn the more tax I pay and the double whammy is the rate of tax increase 20%,40%,45%). For this I am denied free prescriptions, free optical care, free dentistry, no legal aid for me, less unemployment benefit when I am made redundant as I have savings.


As mentioned previously the Queen pays voluntary taxes, yet the real culprits of tax avoidance are religions

I recognise taxes need to be paid to provide various services (police, army, schools, NHS, public parks etc..), however the system is flawed (I paid nothing when I was born upto 18(ish), then pay tax until I retire, and then pay little tax in my retirement due to not working (Things like VAT and council tax is paid but not the big ticket item of Income Tax). So the system hopes I pay enough tax during my 45ish working years. However for many they wont pay enough (its that simple).


If you were to take the 750 billion we raise in tax revenue and take out about 50 billion for corporation tax that then leaves 700 billion in all other taxation collected by government from its citizens. Then lets say we scrap all the various forms of taxation and replace it with a single citizens tax, that would mean every person would need to pay about £11,000 each per year to live in the country (be that for 1 day or 365) [£700b / 63m people]. Most people don't pay £11,000 in tax (most families with 2 adults and 2 children don't pay £44,000 annual in tax). Also that £11,000 would be needed per person every year of their life.


Taxation is needed but too much taxation is immoral (I do believe people don't want handouts, they want jobs and the ability to rise to their potential).


Governments waste money as its not their money (any fool can waste another mans money).


Anyway I'm forgetting stuff as I'm drank and the memory is going - Come back tomorrow and I will give you another sermon.


Remember this - if you want to know who controls you, just find out who you cant criticise!

economic

Tromking wrote: »

By morally appropriate I mean everything I earn is filtered through the UK tax authorities.

morally is a silly word to use in this context. why not just use legally?

i do whatever i can do minimise tax as legally as is possible.

economic

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

Ignore people slating you on here saying that you dont care about avoiding tax because you dont earn "enough". Surely if they earn enough they wont worry about paying their taxes.

i think you are missing the point...

Jon_B_2

Tromking wrote: »

By morally appropriate I mean everything I earn is filtered through the UK tax authorities.

I don’t think anybody here is suggesting they don’t? Not sure you really understand legal tax avoidance.

You don’t really start to think about it til you get to higher rate. I put as much as I can into a pension that I can get by to reduce my tax burden.

Think of it this way - I’ll be less reliant on the state pension.

Besides, it’s not only income tax that you pay. VAT, fuel duty, beer duty, stamp duty, etc etc. The amount I pay in tax every year is obscene.

GreatApe

I swing from left to right and back again too often to know which way I truly stand.

On one hand I believe in low taxes so I dont have to pay as much

On the other hand I believe very few people actually pay any 'taxes' that instead it is their positions that pay the taxes, positions that would in most cases exist irrespective of the person being born or not

I suppose the only thing i can say is that communism ends in disaster and capitalism seems to work well and its hard to argue at what percentage of the economy as government things are most ideal. It seems to work from 30-55% of GDP as government but importantly a much lower perhaps 10-25% of the workforce employed by the state the other percentage that tops it up to 30-50% of GDP is actually the private sector providing goods and services eg pensioners spending their state pension money to buy goods and services from the private sector.

The UK is roughly in the middle of this 30-55% of GDP from the state. I think its a reasonably safe place to be so I would not like to see a big swing in either direction. The real folly to avoid is communism which the Corbyn crew are in love with.

GreatApe

westernpromise wrote: »

Probably because you pay so little you don't notice it.

Personally I think there should be a lifetime cap on PAYE, whereby once you've paid X, you pay nothing more for the rest of your life because you've made your contribution.

The problem is that tax payed is not fundamentally linked to the value provided to society.

Take a refuse collector, pay close to nothing in taxes and gets a of costly services out.
Take a 100 meter world sprinter who may earn £20 million a year and receives little back

The first is an important job that needs to be done the second is mostly a monopoly position awarded to someone irrespective of the person it will exist.

Lets say you are the god of the economy and you decide the make the 50,000 refuse collectors disappear overnight thinking it will save the country a lot of money not having to subsidies these people. Well a week later you need to employ 50,000 refuse collectors and since we have full employment those 50,000 had to come from higher payed better status jobs. Well lets make them vanish too and a week later you need to hire 50,000 new refuse collectors and you keep going and going until you get to the £20 million a year sprinter who has long ago seen his earnings crash as his monopoly pricing power fell as the population kept shrinking and soon enough he is now the refuse collector. You can repeat this by replacing the refuse collector with say the bottom 10% of earners keep culling them and the earners above have to step down in pay and status

Anyway I think there is a reasonable argument to be made for the idea that a persons 'tax' contribution is more correlated to the hours worked rather than the wages earned or the number on the tax coulomb of their PAYE. In which case the value added by a refuse collector doing 40 hours a week is more or less the same as someone earning 10x as much working also 40 hours a week

Having said that I dont believe in communism
And I believe there needs to be a wealth class like you because if there was not that road for you you would potentially be dangerous :rotfl: and I am not joking here. Or at least much more inclined to be much less productive*
In the same way as we need democracy not because you and I can put an x in a box but its a way for those who covet power to take it without starting wars that will wipe one firth of the population every few decades a monarch or dictator dies.

kinger101

economic wrote: »

i dont evade tax but i do try to avoid it by making full use of ISAs, pensions, etc.

Jon_B wrote:

You don’t really start to think about it til you get to higher rate. I put as much as I can into a pension that I can get by to reduce my tax burden

There's a bit of conflation going on here.

Tax evasion is theft, and anyone engaging in it can be prosecuted under criminal law (though civil law is usually used due to easier burden of proof thresholds).

Tax avoidance is regarded as the legal minimization of taxation by exploiting the law in a way parliament did not intend. It usually involves complex transfer-pricing arrangements with off-shore legal entities designed to siphon profit out of a higher tax regime into a lower tax regime. In short, finding a loophole.

ISAs and pension schemes were specifically created within the legislation as a mechanism for people to save money. The reduced tax is there as an incentive to ensure people provide for the own future. Although one might minimize the amount of tax they pay over their lifetime, it isn't regarded by the government (or accounting profession) as tax avoidance.

Moby

Tromking wrote: »

I know such behaviour is lauded on these boards, but in the court of public opinion it won’t go down to well. An uncomfortable fact for the Queen and her advisors.

The winds of change are in the air and the attitudes towards tax which regrettably dominate on these forums are gradually changing in wider society.