Dover.uk.com

You are wrong Charlie....shame on you....

17 June 2014

I am intending to get back to some regular blogs when I return from a cruise next month but, in the meantime, I need to respond to Charlie Elphicke's call to change the law to prosecute professionals including lawyers, accountants and other financial advisers (which would include me) for advising on tax avoidance.

Much as I respect and support Charlie as an excellent MP, I am astonished that he, a tax lawyer, should make such a call appealling as it does to the most base and ignorant instincts of many of the electorate.  This is clearly done purely for political reasons and that is to Charlie's eternal shame.

First of all let me make something clear - there is no excuse for tax evasion, that is illegal and I fully support all measures to prosecute those who break the law.  Those guilty of evasion should be dealt with severely including the professionals who may help facilitate that illegal activity.

Tax avoidance is different.  That is legal and it is something everyone does to some degree and quite rightly so.

As long as we all have property rights we have the right to take whataver legal means are available to protect our property and that property includes the money we earn and the investment assets we own.  To deny people that right and the right of others to advise them what is legal to do, is to instigate an authoritarian regime in which personal freedoms are finally ended and nothing, absolutely nothing, is less 'Conservative' than doing that.

Government is not our master, it is our servant and having the ability to challenge the way the law is applied is a fundamental element of personal freedom.

Yes there is a problem and it is largely a problem of the governments making.  Our tax laws are far too complex, they leave far too many loop-holes which can never be filled by making the law ever more complex or by imposing authoritarian government.  The answer is tax reform, to change the system to have simple and low taxes that will help economic recovery and raise the revenue the government needs.  Charlie would serve us better to be campaigning for such tax reform rather than appealing to baser instincts.

Of course the government should also stop spending too much as well but that is another story....
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