I should be hard pressed to imagine anything less interesting than the tax affairs of one Jimmy Carr*, a comedian – so I’m told – of whom I had never heard till about two days ago, but, as they seem to be occupying the trivial frontal lobes of those that run the United Kingdom since the War, let me add my two-pennyworth.

I didn’t imagine Mr. Heath’s making an even bigger fool of himself than he had already in the course of two years as First Lord of the Treasury but I believe that, in pontificating about Mr. Carr’s tax arrangements, he has.

Mr. Carr is well within his rights and bound by simple logic, I should’ve thought, to minimize his tax burden.  Indeed, were he director of a company of which I was a stockholder, I’d be sorely grieved if he failed to minimize the company’s tax liability and might even bring an action against him for squandering the company’s commonwealth.

That some tax-payers can engage in such tax avoidance and others not is not ‘unfair’ :  like tax avoidance itself, it results solely from the complexity of taxation.  The answer is blindingly obvious (one would think) :  simplify the tax system and avoidance will vanish.

Unlike tax evasion, tax avoidance is entirely lawful and in no wise morally repugnant as suggested by the politicians :  one is entitled so to arrange one’s affairs as to minimize one’s tax burden.  Mr. Carr has as much right to the relief from taxation that his particular arrangements grant him as Mr. Heath’s father-in-law has to the subsidy – much more lucrative, I suspect – he receives in respect of the useless wind turbines on his land.  So, borrowing another dictum from J.C., I say to Mr. Heath, “He that is without sin among you, …”

ΠΞ

* Interesting initials although, when J.C. recommended rendering unto Caesar, the other J.C. was long gone.

humanati
June 30, 2012 at 13:58

Taxation is immoral unless it is voluntary.

We all have a right to keep the fruits of our labour.

Taxation through coercion using the threat of violence, loss of liberty
& theft of property is immoral.

Taxation is the life blood of tyrannical Big Brother government.

The rich pay no tax. I don’t want them to. I want government removed from
education/indoctrination, healthcare/big pharma drug factories, & I refuse
to accept or consent to government having any powers I do not have myself.

I do not accept they have a right to secrecy for ANY REASON whatsoever
because this is always used to protect tyranny & subjugate the people
which it should serve.

I own me & no one has the right to violate my free will or tell me what
I can & can’t do as long as I respect others same God given rights to live
how they choose to.

I can no longer pay the government protection money they call tax. I won’t
give money to murderers, liars & thieves because that would make me
complicit.

I was born because the Creator of the universe gave me life, consciousness
& free will.

I will not abdicate these rights & no one can take them away from me,
unless I choose to give them up.

If you want to be free, you need to stop acting like slaves, whatever the
price.

The truth is, when enough of us realise these things & refuse to
acquiesce to threats & acts of violence & support each other when
anyone else is targeted by these mafia, then our world will change instantly
& forever for the better.

tangentreality June 27, 2012 at 09:48

I agree completely. But just as an aside, when Christ said ‘render unto
Caesar’, he wasn’t talking about Julius Caesar, he was talking about Tiberius
Caesar, the Roman Emperor at the time. Caesar, by then, had become a word to
represent the Imperator Perpetuii – the holder of legal power for life.

I know, I know – now that the hair has been split, I will put the axe away!

Spiral Architect
June 27, 2012 at 04:46

Cameron is a bloody idiot.

Meanwhile, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander MP (Lib-Dem, ),
had this to say on the matter,

“… to most people it’s outrageous that a few of the very richest and their
expensive financial advisers are devising ever more obscure and underhand ways
of not paying their tax. When it comes to paying their fair share, some of the
people who can afford it most think they can get away with paying the
least.

Frankly, I think people who dodge the tax system are the moral equivalent
of benefit cheats. Both sets of people think they can bend the rules everyone
else lives by for their own benefit. That is bad enough on its own but what
makes it worse is that it’s people like Sun readers who have to make up the
difference.”

This would be the SAME Danny Alexander who admitted that he took advantage
of a loophole to legally avoid paying CGT on the sale of the south London
property for £300,000 in June 2007. After being elected as an MP in 2005, Mr
Alexander declared the flat in south London as his SECOND HOME to the
parliamentary authorities, and claimed more than £37,000 in expenses for the
flat, even carrying out some work to the property at the taxpayers’ expense
shortly before selling in June 2007.

Alexander took advantage of a tax loophole that allows people to continue
to tell the tax authorities for three years that a property is their MAIN HOME
even if they have bought another house – in Mr Alexander’s case in Scotland –
which has become their “principal residence”.

However, this did not stop him telling the authorities at the House of
Commons that the London property was his second home.

So, Alexander is in the same boat as Carr, in fact he is worse, and should
be investigated for fraud just as the likes of Morley were.

Politicians………can’t like them, can’t douse them petrol and set to them.

Brian June 26,
2012 at 23:50

Off topic, but aaaaaah! : )

Saul June 26, 2012 at 21:33

Come on everyone, the rich don’t pay taxes, they have people working for
them to find ways around it. I have to laugh when it is said, tax the rich,
they will always find a way around it.

Mudplugger June 26, 2012 at 20:53

Slightly mangled quote. “Vote Early & Vote Often” was always the
rumoured principle in Irish elections, where ‘personation’ was more an
established habit than a very occasional crime elsewhere.

In Leicester and Bradford (amongst others, you know who you are) the new
franchise principle is somewhat more refined. “Vote Postally, Vote Relatively
& Vote Profitably” would seem to sum it up. As long as you can dream up
the names of a few dozen relatives, living or dead, in the UK or elsewhere,
those nice people at City Hall will send you a neat pile of crisp Postal
Ballot-papers to your tiny two-bed hovel, leaving you plenty of time to hawk
the whole batch round the candidates to see who will give you the best deal
for them, then all you’ve got to do is fill them in, Freepost them back in
time and bank the moolah. Banana Republic anyone ?

Pericles June 26, 2012 at 19:36

As ever at The Raccoon Arms, we have comments both interesting and to the
point.

Ed P, if there be anything illegal about the scheme – I
have not examined it in detail and don’t intend to – let the authorities prove
it and claw back the unpaid tax. The nature of tax avoidance however – as
against evasion – is that it is legal ; it is disingenuous of
politicians and comedians alike to pretend otherwise.

Jeremy, the hypocrisy of the left and, it must be
admitted, politicians of all persuasions, is undeniable. That Mr. Carr has
shewn himself an hypocrite is unremarkable ; the hypocrisy of the politicians,
on the other paw, …

As usual, Engineer, you encapsulate the whole issue in a
paragaph. Mudplugger likewise.

And whom, drsolly, think you that I have in mind in my
allusion to ‘Mr. Heath’ ?

Backwoodsman, I share your sentiment : there are two
things to say about voting :

‘Vote now and vote often’ (favoured in Leicester and Bradford, I
understand) ;

‘Don’t vote : it only encourages them.’

Zanshin, those that contribute to conversations in this
establishment might be of what might well be termed a ‘libertarian’
disposition ; the libertarian, however, is a broad church. I wonder whether
you’re confounding libertarianism and mere anti-social behaviour.

ΠΞ

Frankie June 27, 2012 at 00:25

Well said, sir!

Zanshin June 27, 2012 at 22:11

“I wonder whether you’re confounding libertarianism and mere anti-social
behaviour”

Not at all, but I do tend to point out to people that they’re being
priggish, or holier than thou. I am glad to find that the contibutors to
this site are such shining examples of “morality” – whatever that means –
and wtould not partake of a “legal out” if offered the choice.
The road
to hypocracy is two way, Carr might be a hypocrite, but tax avoidence is
perfectly legal. Being called “immoral” by a supporter and friend of VERY
large tax avoiders (or even evaders) , especially when you are being
attacked by someone using parlimentary privilege to slander an individual,
is not only hypocitical; but also very smelly indeed.
As for my remark
about “being to the right of Atilla the Hun”, I have read a lot of the posts
on this site, and it appears that most of the posters would like a return to
the Middle Ages, or even the social acceptances of places like Brazil,
India, Pakistan et al, with people living in cardboard boxes, starving to
death, begging, the disenfranchising of those under 25 etc, and that’s just
in the “civilized” UK.
When I was younger I glanced out of the kitchen
window and saw a man slumped in a garage doorway, in the lane behind the
house. I went down to see if he was ok, and he was a homeless man in his
forties who had frozen to death – yards from a nice warm house, but hey, he
wasn’t a taxpayer so that’s alright.

Ian R Thorpe June
26, 2012 at 18:23

What I found morally repugnant around the time jimmy Carr’s totally legal
tax avoidance was being splashed around the media was the multi himeowning
millionairesss and beneficiary of offshore trust funds Polly Toynbee writing
in The Guardian (the parent ompany of which uses offshore companies to hide
its profits while declaring losses on UK operations) that to solve the debt
crisis the bureaucrats od Brussels should dig into the wealth of the rich.

But of course neither the E U, Bank of England, HMRC nor anybody else can
sequester funds held legally in sovereign states that have friendly tax
regimes.

The answer is to simplify tax systems and start acting to stop government
waste.

Mark June 26, 2012 at 17:04

Entirely agree with Anna and Mudplugger makrs agood point too

Zanshin June 26, 2012 at 16:39

And I thought this was a libertarian blog site.
Please make your minds
up, there is a definite lean somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun!
Or
perhaps I’m missing something?

Mark June 26, 2012 at 17:09

Perhaps it’s about one’s librty to organise one’tax affairs as one likes?
And the fr
eedom to be ahypocrite?

binao June 26, 2012 at 19:14

There’s not much libertarian about the hypocrisy of the usual left wing
suspects as per above.
These particular very rich people are very keen to
advance the borrowing taxing and spending of everybody else’s money to the
point of ruin to indulge in their pipedream of socialist nirvana, but are
extremely reticent about contributing themselves.

Brass Monkey
June 29, 2012 at 19:50

Dead right!

Backwoodsman
June 26, 2012 at 15:50

Pericles, as pointed about above, it is the rank hypocricy of the usual
leftist suspects which is the issue here.
IMHO anyone who pays a penny in
tax that he can possibly evade, avoid, or otherwise keep out of the hands of
the chancers responsible for the ongoing clusterfuck, is a responsible
citizen. Don’t pay up, it only encourages them !

drsolly
June 26, 2012 at 15:48

Not that it matters, but I thought that Mr Cameron was First Lord of the
Treasury?

Anyhow what does matter is whether it is moral to make use of tax
avoidance, to minimise tax liability.

I have an ISA and some premium bonds, in order to minimise my tax
liability. Why is this immoral? And if it is immoral, and something that
shouldn’t be, why has the government legislated in order to allow it?

It’s the government’s job to make the tax rules. If they’ve made immoral
tax rules, then they should change them.

Mudplugger
June 26, 2012 at 16:04

You identify well the source of the hipocrisy.

From very early, and poor beginnings, we have been actively encouraged by
the Government to engage is tax-avoidance through its own range of products,
particularly National Savings and Premium Bonds, where gains are paid free
of tax. The Government also sets the stage for ISAs, again aimed at the low
entry-level ‘tax-avoider’. How come then that they feign shocked surprise
when any higher earners merely extend the same ‘approved’ principle to
bigger numbers and different devices ?

All gains, whether earned or unearned, should be subject to that same
standard and simple tax regime. But it won’t happen, as that would hit a lot
of lawyers and accountants directly in their own pockets – and there’s such
a lot of lawyers in Parliament – funny that.

Engineer June 26, 2012 at 14:27

Simplifying the tax system would be a definite benefit to the nation – or
at least the part of it burdened with paying taxes – but just as important a
measure to reduce tax avoidence would be to reduce the amount taken in tax.
The lower the overall burden, the less the incentive to avoid.

Another point is that it is those most heavily marginally taxed – the low
paid – who have least opportunity to avoid the burden. That in itself is an
unfairness.

cascadian June 26, 2012 at 18:50

Taxes are for the little people, ask Ed Balls, Bono, Gordon Brown, Tony
Bliar, Jimmy Carr and Polly Toynbee or the thousands of lefty hypocrites
crying for more public services while avoiding what most would consider a
reasonable share.

The solution is so simple it will never be implemented-a flat tax on
EVERY wage-earner at 25% of individual income initially until the debt is
repaid then progressive reduction to fund a minimal government. And
publication of everybody’s contribution by HMRC, we obviously have to shame
the gobby leftists and entrepreneurs.

Friend of Dog
June 26, 2012 at 21:55

Here, here. Again.

Span
Ows June 30, 2012 at 16:50

It’s hear hear!…again

Jeremy
Poynton June 26, 2012 at 13:45

Think you have missed the point. A regular feature of this “comedian’s”
shows is him knocking …. tax dodgers and such like. It’s not about the
legality of what he did, rather the GROSS hypocrisy of him pandering to the
Left in public, and doing otherwise in private. That’s what the stink is
about. And rightly so. Only a cunt would behave the way Carr did.

Friend of Dog
June 26, 2012 at 21:54

Here, here.

Span
Ows June 28, 2012 at 22:10

hear hear

“Only a cunt would behave the way Carr did”…is that why all TV
comedians seem to so unfunny?

Ed P June 26, 2012 at 13:41

Agreed, but there is some reasonable doubt about the legality of this
particular tax avoidance scheme.