There is also something wrong in peoples attitudes if a multimillionaire can effectively do what someone who is much much worse off does and be merrily praised for it. I bet most people at the pub would pat you on the back for dodging tax but equally foam at the mouth when reading The Daily Mail.
Been wanting to write about this subject for a while and picked possibly the worst location ever -.-
Surely all the 118s are down now scotty? I can't imagine ever ringing one. 118 118 and 118 Maureen are the only ones I can remember and the Maureen one is just the tilting advert and not the actual number!
Heard an advert for one on my drive back today. 73p/minute!
I think that the media loves to go for the benefits stories now as they are easy to do, take little to no research, guarantee viral shares and comments.
Just think its human nature to get angry at those in society who are 'below' you in the pecking order and blame them.
With how the social housing is managed nowadays it doesn't help. A friend of mine bought a new build for £250k and worked very hard to save the deposit/mortgage payments. On the same plot, just a few doors down, the council have housed a family on benefits in an identical house except it has no garage and is slightly smaller.
Of course he's gonna be angrier about that than some rich guy in a country house who does all he can to pay the bare minimum in tax.
It's easy for us as non tax paying poker players to see the bigger picture but I completely understand why those who put in 40 hour weeks + travelling time into a normal depressing job, get taxed heavily on it and only get a few weeks a year holiday are bitter about benefit claimants. There are millions of people out there where life is a real struggle month to month.
As well as that the millionaire's (and other entrepeneurs/successful business men and women) who are trying to avoid paying as much tax as possible are (usually) not doing anything illegal plus trying to avoid paying tax means you are generally contributing to society.
If you use a tax trick to pay say £50k in tax instead of £250k in tax you're losing the treasury £200k - but you're giving the treasury £50k; the benefits cheats might cost less with what they're taking - but they're contributing a minutely smaller amount in return.
I'm pretty liberal and don't get mad at either - but for the whole of society I'd say the tax avoiders are the lesser evil.
The Tax Gap
That ‘tax gap’ has four major components:
1. Income lost as a result of a downturn in economic activity: this is not the concern of this
paper;
2. Tax lost to tax avoidance, which is defined here as seeking to minimise a tax bill without
deliberate deception (which would be tax evasion or fraud) but contrary to the spirit of the
law;Tax Research LLP
4
3. Tax lost to tax evasion, which is the illegal non payment or under-payment of taxes, usually
by making a false declaration or no declaration to tax authorities, resulting in legal penalties
if the perpetrator is caught;
4. Non payment of tax declared to be due, i.e. bad debt suffered by HM Revenue & Customs.
Estimates of these tax gaps are rare, and subject to considerable dispute. Richard Murphy, writing
for the UK TUC estimated that the UK tax avoidance gap was £25 billion in 20081
. He has since
estimated that tax evasion is not less than £70 billion in the UK using data published by HM Revenue
& Customs2
. The UK’s HM Revenue & Customs estimate these two gaps to be £40 billion in total,
with the split between evasion and avoidance being unclear and using parameters for definition
much tighter than those used by Murphy3
. UK unpaid tax is currently estimated to be £28 billion4
.
The likely gap is therefore not less than £70 billion and might be as high as £120 billion. That sum is
between 40% and 68% of the current annual tax deficit. Tackling this issue is, therefore, of
paramount importance.
"
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/PCSTaxGap.pdf"
Addressing the ‘tax gap’ is a vital part of tackling the deficit. Figures produced for PCS by the Tax Justice Network show that £25 billion is lost annually in tax avoidance and a further £70 billion in tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals.
An additional £26 billion is going uncollected. Therefore PCS estimates the total annual tax gap at over £120 billion (more than three-quarters of the annual deficit!). It is not just PCS calculating this; leaked Treasury documents in 2006 estimated the tax gap at between £97 and £150 billion.
http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/campaign-resources/there-is-an-alternative-the-case-against-cuts-in-public-spending.cfmOur personal tax system is currently highly regressive. The poorest fifth of the population pay 39.9% of their income in tax, while the wealthiest fifth pays only 35.1%. We need tax justice in personal taxation – which would mean higher income tax rates for the richest and cutting regressive taxes like VAT and council tax.
Benefit Fraud estimated to be ~£3.2bn. Are we still going to follow the line that tax avoidance/evasion just isn't that bad? At least they contribute? Baring in mind Scotty said his mate got frustrated at people on benefits moving in down the road, and I would presume they aren't committing any sort of fraud and are rightly entitled to be housed there! Does that really piss your mate off more than the bloke dodging mansion tax and using his connections from the golf club to avoid paying national insurance, adding to his increasingly large estate? Corporations that offer zero hour contracts in order to pay staff less, give out less employment benefits and weaken job security only for the wages to be effectively topped up as the recipients of these contracts are forced to claim benefits in order to survive. And rightly or wrongly we are told as a society to look down upon those who need help because of a small minority abusing the system. Imagine how that was received when we look at every other circumstance, people hate to be stereotyped and pigeonholed but continue on in ignorance doing it themselves. How can everyone be so wrong?
Sorry if any facts/figures/sources are incorrect. I spent some time in bed reading and writing bits but its a bit disjointed and meh.
Author