The head of Britain’s trade union movement and the boss of a leading retailer have joined forces to demand the government takes tougher action to catch wealthy tax dodgers.
Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and Julian Richer, founder of the Richer Sounds hi-fi chain, said the public were losing out on up to £36bn a year in taxes owed by companies and individuals that were not being collected.
In a joint intervention before next week’s budget – when the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is expected to prioritise pre-election tax giveaways – they warned HM Revenue and Customs lacked the necessary funding to chase down businesses and the super-rich for non-payment, avoidance and evasion.
Avoidance. Structuring your affairs so as to reduce your tax bill. A reasonable enough definition, yes?
Mr. Richer sold Richer Sounds to an employee trust. One of the effects of that is to leave him with no CGT bill. And, if I’ve read the issue right – and there’s no guarantee I have – the funds received also will not form part of his estate for inheritance tax purposes. That last sounds so unbelievable that I’m sure I’ve misunderstood in fact but that is as far as I understand it right now.
This is, of course, wholly, entirely and completely legal. But it’s a bit much to be lectured on tax avoidance by the man, no?
I just assume these days that anyone demanding ‘the government’ do something about something is a massive hypocrite. It saves time.
Julia – very wise.
On a related note, that tribune of the people Angela Rayner made 50k flogging her council house, and is of course ‘robustly’ defending her actions. LOL. Guarantee when the Labour government wants to tax the crap out of people there’ll be no defence.
You know straight away that anyone who conflates tax avoidance and tax evasion is full of crap.
They called on Hunt to boost HMRC’s funding so it can drastically increase the number of investigations and enforcement cases it can handle
We’ll all get rich by hiring lots more tax collectors.
It’s much, much harder for large companies and corporations to evade tax than it is for plumbers, takeaway shops, builders, minicab drivers et al.
I wonder if anyone has estimated the total revenue ‘lost’ to the exchequer from these sectors, and should that show that the numbers is greater from the latter, whether the TUC will start a campaign against them? Not holding my breath…
Private property is not public property. It is greed to believe you have a Right to other people’s money to use for your own purposes.
Income tax is plunder of private property which is theft. No ifs, buts, ands, – claiming it is necessary to pay for the public services provided by the State that we all enjoy (whether we want or use these services or not), therefore it must be mandatory, is the argument used by the Mafia.
Government is just a protection and extortion racket which gets away with it because it has the monopoly on violence… like the Mafia or any organised crime mob.
“Sir! Sir! Jenkins is minding his own business and not paying you enough, sir!”
Interesting snag.
I’d argue that automatically tracking transactions is one of the reasons for the push for payment by card. And getting rid of that horrid cash.
Of course you may feel that this’s just my paranoia talking.
@boganboy
It’s not paranoia. Look what happened in India when they removed at short notice the high denomination notes.
I avoid paying income tax due to not having any income due to being unemployed. What’s Murf gonna do about that? Whenz the gvmmnt gonna force somebody to pay me?
Poorer Sounds.
I just use Cash Converters when a piece of my cheap stereo system goes caput…Richer Sounds is obverse of the Vimes system of economics