Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
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.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting
everyone is like that but I do believe there's a good degree of hypocrisy amongst the population who don't mind their various fiddles but whine when someone else is found to be doing it. Certain groups are easy targets and it sometimes makes me laugh that those who complain about being unfairly targeted for some reason often indulge in the very same thing.
Let's face it, it's not usually wealthy people who create complicated tax avoidance or even evasion schemes, it's their so called 'professional' lawyers and accountants who sell these schemes to their clients and I don't suppose they openly admit they're highly dubious.
Are those who employ the services of legal experts to get them off charges (for say drunk driving) on technicalities any better, worse, less immoral than people who avoid or evade tax? They'd argue the letter of the law (as opposed to the spirit) is what matters in justifying how they avoided justice. By that argument a good deal of tax avoidance is also perfectly ok.