Quote:
Originally Posted by martyh
Tax schemes usually operate within the letter of the law and are legal ,the only reason they fail is because a tribunal rules that more tax is due because certain criteria have not been met negating the benefits of the scheme .Tax evasion is the deliberate attempt to not pay tax through misrepresentation of facts.You simply cannot say that all schemes are evasion because they are not and 20% of people using such schemes face no penalties at all and even more have the liability reduced on appeal .Tax evasion makes you a criminal ,tax avoidance does not even if more tax is due after the tribunal.
Only in the court of public opinion .
Here's an example of deliberate avoidance .I had a choice a month ago to either buy a new van for work outright or lease one for 3 yrs , I chose leasing because the cost is 100% allowable against tax thus reducing my tax burden ,do you think that is acceptable or do you think i should be forced to take the less tax efficient option of purchasing a van because the country is getting less tax ?
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Not only in the court of public opinion, but the opinion of HMRC and thus the Government of this country. As stated above, they now have the right to review any tax schemes before they are enacted and can rule them illegal. Before they had to discover them and then rule upon them.
Again, I am not saying that all schemes are illegal. If they are cleared by HMRC, then by all means, go ahead. However, the cycle of schemes that were re-written purely to get around rulings against them was dubious at best.
And no, your example is a case of intention of tax laws. Leasing is tax efficient for a reason. If you however said you were leasing for tax purposes but in fact bought it using a shell company (That you owned and controlled, but did not declare to HMRC) and "leased it" from there (i.e. from yourself) in order to claim the tax relief, that would be evasion*.
* Probably, this isn't legal advice.