Does one have a moral duty to Pay tax?

[ladymuck]

What I like is the fact that Income Tax is only a temporary tax and has to be reinstated every year as part of the Finance Act. Wouldn't it be great if the government forgot to submit the reinstatement of Income Tax one year?

[2uk]

[I]

Excellent point DA - now what about the multi-Billion Trident weapon upgrade - Billions of hard working UK tax payers awarded to mainly US companies - and what is the moral aspect of spending billiions to upgrade WMDs ?

People are being ****ed up by govs , oil and weapon companies. So **** them too. I refuse 60 percent of my taxes to go for killing people.

[IR35 Avoider]

Bradley is usually very sensible, but I think he's really lost the plot with the comments that spawned this thread. If you have a moral duty to pay more tax than the minimum you can legally get away with, where do you draw the line? I agree that the IOM schemes are outrageously aggressive, and will have to be legislated against if they are upheld as legal, but (if legal) why is that avoidance unacceptable while structuring your contracts and working practises to avoid IR35 is considered OK? Is it all right to put "my" Standard Life shares in my wifes name so she is taxed on them? HMRC find this perfectly acceptable, so why isn't it all right to put some of my contractor company shares in her name? I pay virtually no tax tax at the moment by using the new rules that allow me to make large pension contributions. Even though the rules were clearly introduced to allow me to do this, should I desist and pay myself a bigger salary so I can pay more tax and NI?

In short, there's one set of rules we are supposed to obey, and they are determined by the law, not morality. If we don't like the way people exploit some loopholes we can always change the law.

I don't agree with the many posters who point to what the government does with money as a justification for tax avoidance/evasion. I share their disaproval, but the correct solution is to vote for the least wasteful politicians. (Avoidance doesn't need to be justified at all. Evasion is not justified by these kinds of arguments.)

Hypothetical question: if 100% of the tax saved by using the most aggressive tax scheme available is given to one of those charities who advertise the stupendous number of third world lives they can save with tiny amounts of money, is that tax avoidance still immoral? (Assume that the law of diminishing returns means that an extra pound spent on health-care in the third world does ten to a hundred times as much "good" as an extra pound spent in the NHS.)

To put it another way, why should a moral person looking for a beneficiary for money he wishes to give away prefer the UK state to any other good cause one can think of?

I avoid tax for my own benefit, but if I were looking to act morally I would have to avoid tax more aggressively than I already do. I would have to join the IOM schemes, and take risks I currently selfishly avoid, in order to have more to give away.

[shoes]

"Does one have a moral duty to Pay tax?"

No.


What are these IOM schemes then? Sounds good to me.


It is worth bearing in mind where the money goes if it goes into my pocket rather than the taxmans. Assuming I didn't use it to help other people by giving (and whether or not this is actually helpful is also debatable) what am I going to do with it?

If you consider a porsche driving champagne quaffing contractor as a vulgar or even morally reprehensible sight, think of those from whom he/she buys things from. The hard working car showroom owner, working hard running their own business and employing members of their local community. The champagne importer, similarly a business owner with people in their employ. These people build communities, these people are the ones that can be bothered and who employ people that otherwise may well be living on benefits. And all these people (business owners and employees and their dependents) rely on customers. People with cash to spend.

So where is the most 'moral' place to put your money? To the taxman who gives it to the chav in a house funded by housing benefit or to people who can be bothered to make a difference?

The money trickles down in a productive way if you spend it. If you give it to the taxman it is wasted on unproductive pointless government administration and spongers.

If you believe paying tax is moral then you are making an incorrect assumption. The assumption is this : 'The government can benefit my community by spending my money in a better way than I can'. Nanny state does not know best.

[minstrel]

Bradley quoted Denis Healy. There was another quote - around the same time I think - which I cannot turn up.

It was along the lines of "a man has no obligation, moral or otherwise, to set his stall such as to give the inland revenue the biggest slice of the pie" It was from a senior judge, possibly the lord chief justice of the day.

Lord Clyde 1929 in Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services & Ritchie v CIR ((1929) 14 TC 754):

"No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores.

The Inland Revenue is not slow - and quite rightly - to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is, in like manner, entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Revenue."


One of my favourite quotes

[DimPrawn]

Every pound you pay in tax is a pound wasted.

It is morally wrong to pay a single penny in tax.

[Denny]

Every pound you pay in tax is a pound wasted.

It is morally wrong to pay a single penny in tax.

Remember that next time you need to call the police or need to go to hospital or send your kids to school.

Do you think public services grow on trees?

I wish you'd stuff your face with donuts and sweets, then perhaps you'd be too busy chomping away to post the carp that you do.

[DimPrawn]

Remember that next time you need to call the police or need to go to hospital or send your kids to school.

Do you think public services grow on trees?

I wish you'd stuff your face with donuts and sweets, then perhaps you'd be too busy chomping away to post the carp that you do.

PS United Arab Emirates has no tax and only 5% social security contribution and has all the things you mention.

[vetran]

You have a moral & legal obligation to pay a reasonable amount of tax, its the definition of reasonable that is the problem.

I don't mind paying for services I may use and to make sure people in need don't suffer, again the definition of need and suffer is shady.

The government has a moral and legal obligation to use money raised wisely for the betterment of the community. This is the pact between public & state, unfortunately some people on both sides have forgotten this.

[Denny]

PS United Arab Emirates has no tax and only 5% social security contribution and has all the things you mention.

That's because they have oil, you twat.