…people are fuckwits according to Christian Aid.
Nine out of 10 people believe tax avoidance by large companies is morally wrong, even if technically legal, according to a survey that appears to reflect growing unease in Westminster about the UK’s unwillingness to tackle the issue.
Oh, my, where to start? There is no “technically legal”. There is legal and illegal. Avoidance is legal. Evasion is illegal. If it is legal, then there is no morality involved. There is what the law demands, Nothing more, nothing less. There is no morality in the matter of taxation – other than the whole enterprise being suspect.
Secondly, companies to not pay tax. People do. So if these large companies paid more in order to satisfy this fair share nonsense, then the shareholders (our pension funds, mostly), the employees and the customers will be the ones picking up the tab. In other words, these nine out of ten morons are saying “tax us more, please”. Except, of course, being morons, what they actually mean is tax other people more so that I can have free stuff.
Now, tell me, who is being immoral here?
The Guardian also revealed the lengths to which companies will go to avoid paying substantial amounts of UK tax…
Well, they should know…
I’m always tickled by the Guardian’s faux outrage over tax avoidance – they’ve been at it for years. The rest of us however, tend to refer to it as “fiscal prudence”.
As Macaulay said, “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality”.
Those periodical fits of ‘morality’ seem to come thicker and faster these days. The only saving grace might be that they come so fast and furious that even the most assiduous warrior for justice can barely keep up with the program.
I don’t these days tend to follow links that will depress me yet a little more (so that rules out the Guardian and Christian Aid, just for instance), but I’m assuming this might be linked to a recent survey by Cantor on behalf of HMRC. Normally you can fob them off, but they pestered little old me with extraordinary, presumably well rewarded, persistence for ages; so finally, mostly to get rid of them yet partly curious, I answered their questions. Snuck in the middle of the scripted fifteen/twenty minutes of mind numbing (how are we doing on a scale of…?) guff was a distinctly leading question blurring the vital difference between avoidance and evasion. Can big corporations do more, be more transparent, or suchlike weasel words. I wondered at the time how nine out of ten people might well respond to the proposition ‘let the other guy pay more’. I thought it was so inherently dishonest.
I contrasted this with real life as she is lived. When someone comes to you with a tax efficient proposition (even if it is as mundane as open an ISA, pay into a pension, cop less tax which on past form they are only going to blow and likely not on you or yours anyway) you say, ‘What a good and socially useful idea!’ Not a hint of ‘but maybe we are overpaid for what we do’ or ‘do we actually deserve that joint we hardly use in Tuscany’. Bugger that, you weirdo. Vide, the Guardian. Not a whisker of conscience is disturbed (actually rightly, I’d say, on that particular score).
Apart from your Macaulay, the other well-known axiom that is appropriate here is Lord Coles’ (1929?) judgement to the approximate effect that ‘no man is under any obligation to furnish the Revenue with a bigger shovel to set in his stores’. And of course, Shaw’s loosely remembered observation that one can always rely on Peter’s vote when it comes to deciding whether Paul should pay more. Or vice versa.
Of course, in a globalised (and essentially in so many inconvenient ways, skint and living beyond its prudent means) political economy it’s a little more complex, but the basic picture’s there. Not much changes in human nature.
Do any of these people have ISAs? That’s a technically legal way of avoiding tax. Do any of them rush to the continent to top up on booze and fags? Another technically legal means to avoid tax (as long as it is for non-commercial purposes).
Not smoking, drinking or driving…
Baffling. Why would anyone ever believe that the government will spend their money more wisely than they would if they were allowed to keep it? Even if they are fool enough to think that it is only other people’s money that the government is going to waz away on fake charities and vanity projects.
Decades of corrosive propaganda.
Is it not the case that registering as a charity is a tax avoidance ‘policy’?
And is so especially when one is using such registration to cover activities that are clearly political lobbying?
Best regards
Well, yes, but that’s okay because reasons.