Tax Avoidance is Normal in our Culture

[Metahive]

I think I stated exactly that with the second half of the quoted sentence.

[Ralin]

The police are more then capable of funding themselves with what gets collected already for local taxes and speeding tickets

Eh, see bolded part. Not really disagreeing with me, are you? You can nitpick long about how exactly certain services are financed, but that's not the point. The point is that the filthy stinking rich (or FSR from now on) have some sort of fundamental opposition to give back to the community that provides for them.

Besides the police the FSR benefit in other ways from state services that are financed by taxes. Take infrastructure (streets, water and energy*) or the whole legal system that ensures them being able to actually keep their wealth for example. Then there's also the fact that it's in the FSR's own best interest to not shit into the beds they are lying in. States where the gap between poor and rich excessively widens tend to become very unstable with violent uprisings soon to follow. I mean, look at all those aristocrats dangling from lampposts because they thought the starving masses should just go and eat cakes.

Local taxes was probably the wrong way to put it. The point is that it seems more than possible to fund all the functions of society rich people have reason to care about by taxing everyone else.

Suppose I'm not really disagreeing, but you really only need to pay some of the poor to keep most of the poor in line.

Also bear in mind that the truly filthy rich generally didn't get that way by being civic minded and moral*. So I suspect some of that is just continuing what they'd been doing all along.

*Leaving aside people who were born rich and learned from the former

[amigocabal]

The idea that tax avoidance could be socially acceptable is problematic itself. Legally it is acceptable, but you are just being rather anti-social about it. Especially given the main mantra of conservatives is to reduce public spending, it reinforce the idea that there is no need to help others in society that weren't so lucky.

What are the consequences of people in Britain not paying more in taxes than they have to?


Prince William has to wait amn extra year for his solid gold statue?

[madd0ct0r]

then the goverment's rhetoric about not claiming more benefits then you have to becomes even more hypocritical.

[Crazedwraith]

The idea that tax avoidance could be socially acceptable is problematic itself. Legally it is acceptable, but you are just being rather anti-social about it. Especially given the main mantra of conservatives is to reduce public spending, it reinforce the idea that there is no need to help others in society that weren't so lucky.

What are the consequences of people in Britain not paying more in taxes than they have to?


Prince William has to wait amn extra year for his solid gold statue?

No.

Try and think about all the people getting cuts to benefits and public services. (even down to little stuff like less road improvements and the lights on the roads being turned off) Think about the troubles the NHS is currently facing.

We do not just give all our taxes to the royal family.

[Elheru Aran]

The idea that tax avoidance could be socially acceptable is problematic itself. Legally it is acceptable, but you are just being rather anti-social about it. Especially given the main mantra of conservatives is to reduce public spending, it reinforce the idea that there is no need to help others in society that weren't so lucky.

What are the consequences of people in Britain not paying more in taxes than they have to?


Prince William has to wait amn extra year for his solid gold statue?

No.

Try and think about all the people getting cuts to benefits and public services. (even down to little stuff like less road improvements and the lights on the roads being turned off) Think about the troubles the NHS is currently facing.

We do not just give all our taxes to the royal family.

In fact, it's (almost) the other way around-- IIRC the royal family of England is largely self-supporting due to various extensive properties, investments, and tourism. They're putting money into the economy rather than the other way around.

The thing about these people that are being reported on in this article-- Lord Fink (god, I love British names) and his lot-- is that they can *afford* to pay taxes. They could pay a wad of money to the revenue service and not even really notice because they'd make it up a month or two down the road. They are deliberately avoiding paying taxes even though they can afford to quite easily, and that's the problem. They are an entirely different category from people who can pay taxes but it's an actual burden, or those who depend upon income funded by taxes on other people's income.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The idea that tax avoidance could be socially acceptable is problematic itself. Legally it is acceptable, but you are just being rather anti-social about it. Especially given the main mantra of conservatives is to reduce public spending, it reinforce the idea that there is no need to help others in society that weren't so lucky.

What are the consequences of people in Britain not paying more in taxes than they have to?


Prince William has to wait amn extra year for his solid gold statue?

No.

Try and think about all the people getting cuts to benefits and public services. (even down to little stuff like less road improvements and the lights on the roads being turned off) Think about the troubles the NHS is currently facing.

We do not just give all our taxes to the royal family.

Yeah I really hate that argument. Especially since the costs for the Royal Family is moeny you'd have to spend anyway on a statue. Also, who the hell actually bothers with a solid gold (or silver, for that matter) statue?

Slightly more on-topic, where does this idea of the wealthy not paying "their fair share" actually come from? Since even with the legal tax loopholes, they are still going to pay far more in absolute terms than the average guy earning 19K (or whatever the current average wage is). I recall a statistic (I can't find the source offhand so feel free to dismiss it) showing that the top 1% of earners pay 24% of total tax revenues. Remember, 10% of a million pounds is still a hundred times more than 10% of ten grand.

[Crown]

Just in case there were any naive lambs out there believing that the main stream media (Sarah Palin ruined that phrase so much, you can't type it without hearing her high pitched edge with insanity nasal voice) had your back on reporting the 'facts', form the Guardian;

Peter Oborne resigns, saying Telegraph's HSBC coverage a 'fraud on readers'
Ex-chief political commentator launches blistering attack on paper, saying it put bank’s interests before readers to save ad contract
Read Peter Oborne’s blog in full
Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, has resigned from the paper, accusing it of a “fraud on its readers” over its coverage of HSBC.

In a blistering attack on the paper’s management and owners, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, Oborne claimed the paper deliberately suppressed stories about the banking group in order to keep its valuable advertising account.

He said it was a “most sinister development” at the paper, where he claimed the traditional distinction between the advertising and editorial department had collapsed.

Oborne said he had told Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of the paper’s parent company the Telegraph Media Group, that he was resigning last December.

He said he had intended to leave quietly but had a “duty to make all this public” following the Telegraph’s coverage of last week’s revelations about HSBC’s Swiss banking arm, which helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities.

Oborne said readers “needed a microscope to find” the paper’s reporting of the HSBC scandal, which received many pages of coverage in other UK national titles including the Guardian, Financial Times, Daily Mail and Times.

“The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers,” Oborne said in an article on the Open Democracy website, published on Tuesday.

“It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers. There is only one word to describe this situation: terrible.

“If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril.”

Oborne claimed it was a pattern that could be seen elsewhere in the paper’s reporting, including its coverage of last year’s protests in Hong Kong.

Oborne alleged that the paper had discouraged critical stories of HSBC since the start of 2013 when the bank suspended its advertising with the paper following a Telegraph investigation into its operation in Jersey.

He said one former Telegraph executive told him HSBC was “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”.

A Telegraph representative said: “Like any other business, we never comment on individual commercial relationships, but our policy is absolutely clear.

“We aim to provide all our commercial partners with a range of advertising solutions, but the distinction between advertising and our award-winning editorial operation has always been fundamental to our business. We utterly refute any allegation to the contrary.

“It is a matter of huge regret that Peter Oborne, for nearly five years a contributor to the Telegraph, should have launched such an astonishing and unfounded attack, full of inaccuracy and innuendo, on his own paper.”

Before the HSBC revelations were published – by the Guardian and a range of other outlets including the BBC – and while discussions were continuing over the material, the bank put its advertising with the Guardian’s parent company, Guardian News & Media, “on pause”.

This plus those fucks Osborne and 'Just call me Dave' Cameron promising more austerity if they win elections, we are so fucked.

[madd0ct0r]

You mean in the same week the same bank has been linked as a tax dodger, affiliate of a dodgy minister AND was trying to manipulate the press?

[LaCroix]

You mean in the same week the same bank has been linked as a tax dodger, affiliate of a dodgy minister AND was trying to manipulate the press?

Nah...

The press was manipulating itself in order to keep it safe regarding their ads revenues.

[jwl]

Just in case there were any naive lambs out there believing that the main stream media (Sarah Palin ruined that phrase so much, you can't type it without hearing her high pitched edge with insanity nasal voice) had your back on reporting the 'facts', form the Guardian;

What is it you would call the "mainstream media" then? I thought the guardian was part of the mainstream media.

[Crown]

Just in case there were any naive lambs out there believing that the main stream media (Sarah Palin ruined that phrase so much, you can't type it without hearing her high pitched edge with insanity nasal voice) had your back on reporting the 'facts', form the Guardian;

What is it you would call the "mainstream media" then? I thought the guardian was part of the mainstream media.

The Guardian is apart of the mainstream media, however its ownership under The Scott Trust from 1936 to 2008 and now The Scott Trust Ltd all aim to make sure that this isn't a for profit media enterprise. This has always ensured that the editorial staff never had to worry about commercial concerns when printing their stories which greatly reduced any conflicts of interests (unlike pretty much every other mainstream media outlets which depend on commercial deals to make money).

Further more, The Guardian is the only paper in the UK which conducts an annual audit on its own paper via an independent auditor to look at any kind of ethical malpractice and is also the only UK paper to have an internal ombudsman to review any reader complaints.

In short; it's set up to catch its self out if it lies, it's not being printed for profit (in fact it is notoriously a money losing enterprise) and it can't be bullied by any special interest. If you look at all the other mass media in the world they are all owned by pretty much the same people, practice self censorship for either commercial gain or access to politicians.