Phligm Phlagm

[philmophlegm]

Worried that you might avoid tax? This helpful guide shows you how to avoid avoiding tax.

Does going to court to change your dead millionaire father's will so you pay less inheritance tax count as "avoiding tax"?

Interesting reviews of all the Gollancz SF Masterworks so far.

5 Misconceptions About #GamerGate and the Truth Behind the Myths

Five Actors

Comments

[king_pellinor]

Giving to charity has been called tax avoidance. Indeed, it was a target of anti-avoidance legislation a few years ago when they brought in the cap on sideways loss relief. Thankfully sense was seen and it was excluded from that cap, but it was an explicit target at first.

Being a charity is being called tax avoidance at the moment, where people are complaining about the status of private schools.

The problem is that in most of the cases complained about as avoidance, it's simply that different actions have different consequences. The most obvious is perhaps just the question of where activity takes place.

If I sit in the UK and sell to UK people, then that activity is in the UK and I pay that there. If I sit in France and sell to UK people, then that activity is... well, depending on what it is, it could be taxable in the UK, or in France, or in the UK for some taxes and in France for others. So in fact #13 on that list is explicit avoidance, too.

Margaret Hodge, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has complained that the Patent Box is being used to reduce tax bills, which she says is not the point of the regime. So there's #14 too.

Several large companies have been reported in the media as using "capital allowances", a well-known dodge, to reduce taxable profits. That's #15.

[steer]

Giving to charity has been called tax avoidance.

Yes, but not giving in the way described in that article.

it was a target of anti-avoidance legislation a few years ago

Which makes it pretty clear the avoidance was not in the spirit intended by the law.

has complained that the Patent Box is being used to reduce tax bills

Companies are abusive of it. But #14 describes something different.

Being a charity is being called tax avoidance at the moment

Yes, but not giving in the way described in that article. Nobody is describing everything with charitable status as tax avoiding... as usual there are clear violations of the spirit, clear in keeping with the spirit and "hard cases".

As I said, there are difficult cases, that article doesn't describe them, or seemingly have any kind of point whatsoever.