Is this not all down to your attitude to risk?
No one likes to pay tax and the Courts have agreed in the past that there is nothing wrong with legally arranging your affairs so that you pay as little as possible.
HMRC are currently tasked with raising an additional £7Bn per year by 2015.
In this climate HMRC are obviously going to try and stop avoidance if they can, as more people are likely to be looking for ways to minimise what they have to pay.
Tax avoidance is legal and tax evasion is not, although I accept that HMRC and Government ministers either no longer understand the concept or are are trying to deliberately blur the picture (surely not!).
If someone comes up with a cunning plan to pay less tax and it is legal, whether through badly written legislation or otherwise, then it is down to me as an individual to do my own due diligence on the product and then decide whether to use it or not, based on my own attitude to risk.
Do I expect HMRC to like it, no of course not, particularly with their current targets, but that does not mean they can just ignore the legal position.
They can certainly challenge any avoidance where they think they might have a case and can make as much noise about avoidance that they don't like but can't stop, or they can legislate to change things in the future.
The concept of retrospective legislation doesn't sit too comfortably in a western democracy. I know what the law is today, but how am I supposed to organise my affairs, pay the right tax and complete my tax return correctly if someone is going to change the law that applies today, next week, month or year?
HMRC have a habit of delaying tactics or claiming they will close things down and that is just all part of their game plan of trying to stop more people taking similar action. I don't have a problem with that but just as with solution providers, I don't necessarily believe everything they say.
A case in point would be IR35 which HMRC told us would raise £000's of millions annually but earlier this year the Office for Tax Simplification revealed IR35 investigations had dropped significantly and they were now raising as little as £1million annually!
Gather as much information as you can and make an informed decision for yourself. If you claim not to have full detals of it then I would suggest that you certainly should not be considering it.
No one likes to pay tax and the Courts have agreed in the past that there is nothing wrong with legally arranging your affairs so that you pay as little as possible.
HMRC are currently tasked with raising an additional £7Bn per year by 2015.
In this climate HMRC are obviously going to try and stop avoidance if they can, as more people are likely to be looking for ways to minimise what they have to pay.
Tax avoidance is legal and tax evasion is not, although I accept that HMRC and Government ministers either no longer understand the concept or are are trying to deliberately blur the picture (surely not!).
If someone comes up with a cunning plan to pay less tax and it is legal, whether through badly written legislation or otherwise, then it is down to me as an individual to do my own due diligence on the product and then decide whether to use it or not, based on my own attitude to risk.
Do I expect HMRC to like it, no of course not, particularly with their current targets, but that does not mean they can just ignore the legal position.
They can certainly challenge any avoidance where they think they might have a case and can make as much noise about avoidance that they don't like but can't stop, or they can legislate to change things in the future.
The concept of retrospective legislation doesn't sit too comfortably in a western democracy. I know what the law is today, but how am I supposed to organise my affairs, pay the right tax and complete my tax return correctly if someone is going to change the law that applies today, next week, month or year?
HMRC have a habit of delaying tactics or claiming they will close things down and that is just all part of their game plan of trying to stop more people taking similar action. I don't have a problem with that but just as with solution providers, I don't necessarily believe everything they say.
A case in point would be IR35 which HMRC told us would raise £000's of millions annually but earlier this year the Office for Tax Simplification revealed IR35 investigations had dropped significantly and they were now raising as little as £1million annually!
Gather as much information as you can and make an informed decision for yourself. If you claim not to have full detals of it then I would suggest that you certainly should not be considering it.
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