Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
I'm not going to defend evasion or indeed avoidance which deliberately pushes at the boundaries or what's legal however I wonder how many people wouldn't do exactly the same thing if they were in the position to do so. In my experience wealth doesn't make people happier to pay tax and it doesn't matter whether they're from a aristocratic/privileged background or lottery winners from a council estate. Tax evasion is rife, the only differences are scale and the means by which it's done - undeclared cash in hand or off shore tax havens.
|
Not everyone is like that..
OK. in my experience, most people don't like paying tax, whatever their wealth. I don't, but I accept that it is necessary. I'd like to think that if I should become wealthy, I'd still feel the same, and not squirrel away large sums of money in a Tax Haven.
i have two cousins. One is married to someone very high up in a retail chain, and the other earns a similar wage to his brother-in-law in another job, working for a friend's company. Both of them are well into the higher rate of income tax.
My cousin is only here every 90 days or say as he claims he cannot afford to stay here for longer due to the tax payable. His brother-in-law says that not only can he afford to live in this country and pay the higher rate of tax (even after tax, they do have a very nice, and expensive, lifestyle), but that he feels that the country has contributed a lot to him during his life, even helping him when things weren't so good, so he owes his country.