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Originally Posted by andyl
Everyone tries to get out of paying tax?
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Yeah, fair point, my comment was a bit blase. Its just that, you seem to be rather fortunate in your wealth, but others like me, and my friends around me, don't seem to be. Not everyone tries to cheat the tax system, but people from every part of life. We travel to France to buy beer and fags because VAT is so expensive. I doubt there is a freelancer out there who declares everything he earns. The annoying thing is, the people at the bottom, and the middle, feel the pinch morew than the top, where money to them is just a number. They are standing on their principals.
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A high sales tax instead of Income Tax? Nooooooooo! Indirect taxation always hits the poorest hardest. Income Tax is, well, related to income which makes it fairer (except when income disappears off to the Caymans).
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Well, it was just something that popped into my head, so I don't know about the feasibility of it, but certainly at first glance it seems to do the trick. What I thought about was, for personal taxes, the poorest buy less, and they buy cheaper, so they'd pay less VAT than a richer person who buys more, and buys more expensive. Income tax and its supplements seems to be easy to cheat whereas VAT seems to be much harder as it is taken at the checkout. The only way to avoid this is to buy outside the country, so i'm not sure how feasible it is, it was just a thought.
The trouble you can't really stop people banking in other countries. Its all legal, so how can you convince people to just throw more of their money away? I think the article is more of a class-bashing exercise than anything else. It would be nice if they paid the tax because we'd all benefit, but you can't really blame them for trying to keep their own money. I can't anyway. I will never be rich, let alone super-rich, I doubt I will ever be comfortable. I will always have to work and struggle to get by, but that doesn't mean I have to resent those more fortunate than me? I won't.