BKL tax partner David Whiscombe comments via the UK200 Group on news that 59% of the British public think legal tax avoidance is “unacceptable”. The figures, taken from a new YouGov poll, also showed that only 32% think it is reasonable to try and legally avoid tax.
There are many things which people do, which I’d much prefer them not to do. But you cannot sensibly treat people who haven’t broken the law as if they had, just because you find their lawful activities distasteful; this applies to tax as much as to any other area of the law.
Now, if you want to change the law to make unlawful certain things, which are currently lawful, that’s an entirely different proposition. But the law must be clear; and it’s a whole lot more difficult to pin down the protean concept of “tax avoidance” and to legislate against it, than it is to grandstand about it.
