Tax Avoidance

Politicians preaching about morality is a joke. These are the people who were caught fiddling their expenses, some of whom went to jail for it.

I find things like the Leveson inquiry equally laughable, with MP's judging other people on their ethics.

Chris

If you buy a car with a purely carbon based fossil fuel power source, it is also immoral. This is about balancing one immorality against another.

The problems come when people find ways that reduce their tax without the moral benefits that the particular mechanism provides, or the press latch on to the tax benefit, without considering the public policy that it is trying to achieve, simply because it mainly benefits the rich.

In message , Rob writes

Have you considered the cost of producing hybrids and their batteries in terms of carbon footprints?

Multi-millionaire David Cameron utilises comples trusts to avoid paying the top rate of income tax. He is the ideal person to preach about the immorality of tax avoidance.

Just as Jeremy Fitzmurdoch Hunt was the ideal person to decide whether News International should take full control of Sky.

Adrian

I think I have detected an increasing tendency to accuse others of one's own vices. Particularly amongst politicians.

Yes. What's this I heard on the radio about David Cameron's father putting a lot of money in an off-shore trust for his son?

THEY, not us, are all in it together. Looking back at the Blair government, we have almost a single-party state. Voting is certainly a least-worse selection.

In message , Tiddy Ogg writes

And let's not talk about Gideon Osborne's wife's offshore business interests.

I received a subscription to Private Eye magazine as a Xmas present, and reading it is illuminating but thoroughly depressing, as it exposes all the fiddles and corruption in business and political matters, which are closely entwined, and involve all parties.