Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Not correct. I’m insisting that if you want to win an argument on this you can’t afford to give your opponents a way out by needlessly sloppy language.
If you choose to rail against tax avoidance then fine, that’s your right, but then it’s also the right of those who do it, because it’s legal. End result, you may feel you have the moral high ground but so what ... tax avoidance is still legal and nothing changes.
If, on the other hand, you focus your energy on that which is actually against the law (and apparently costing us £12bn a year), then that’s an argument that forces those who have the power to account for their efforts to enforce the law. That’s an argument that’s unanswerable. If as a society we lobby for that, maybe things will change. It’s also likely that in tightening procedures, some things that are presently legal tax avoidance may become outlawed tax evasion. In which case you get more of what you want.
Or you can continue to insist that words should mean what you want them to, rather than what they actually do, and live with the constant frustration of your arguments constantly getting diverted by matters of semantics.
Personally, I find it easier to work with language rather than against it.
|
Yet again you choose to focus on the pedantry. The pursuit of the illegality is obvious and needs no discussion. The current system allows legal tax avoidance, that is the whole point. You cannot fine tune an instrument that is broken. You need to repair the instrument.
The whole system needs a review at the macro level to define structural changes that aim to make the tax burden fairer. This should tackle both the low-end where cash-only payments escape the net and at the high end where the myriad of "legal" tax avoidance scheme ensure that the wealthy receive a much lower effective tax rate on their yearly "income".
You currently have a system where the middle income PAYE citizens cannot escape their tax burden whereas the low & high end of the wealth distribution have "options".
Back on topic:
The visible pursuit of the taxes "owed" by wealthiest in society will remove a lot of the justification that people at the bottom who just say "What is the point of me trying? The system is rigged against me and the rich will always win"