The tax avoidance "debate": an elegant summing up

[king_pellinor]

This is from the speech made by John Andrews, founder of the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, on being given an award recognising his efforts to help peope who have trouble with their taxes.  Note that he deals with the complete opposite end of the spectrum from multinational companies.


...a report in the US press last year [credit here to Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune] made Facts into a mythical person and then criticised US politicians for killing Facts. The event that caused the demise was when a Florida Republican announced, without any evidence, that at least 81 of his fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives were communists.

This made me think that some tax debates may have pushed our equivalent of the mythical person, Facts, to an early grave here in the UK.

Facts had a long life and I believe was born in ancient Greece, the child of Aristotle who saw that evidence was essential for his nurture. As Facts grew up people like Edmund Burke observed "Facts are to the mind what food is to the body."

Facts helped to discover gravity, break the Enigma Code, discover DNA and, perhaps, introduce self-assessment.

In 2012 however, people seemingly unable to understand how tax systems work, began to doubt and ignore Facts. Opinion became the new truth and reprinting of such opinion in the press confirmed this new truth as correct. No feedback from Facts was thought necessary.

Facts had suffered serious injuries at the time of the 10% tax rate debacle in 2008 and through the misplaced assertions in 2010 about millions of errors being produced by the new PAYE system.

His health was improving, when early last year he was laid low by the absence of any sensible discussion about the granny and pasty taxes.

But nothing was to prepare him for the cruel assault which led to his demise in the final month of twenty-twelve. Assertions in the press that you can judge the right amount of tax a multinational should pay by looking at its turnover; followed by the revelation that for certain there was a £69.9 billion tax gap caused by avoidance, caused Facts to have a major stroke.

He was still in intensive care in hospital when the final straw came. His cousin TaxLaw was the one to break the news. TaxLaw had been admitted to the hospital’s isolation unit and had been ignored by all and sundry, including, at times, the Public Accounts Committee. The oxygen was rushed to Facts when he was told that a coffee bean company was now to be the arbiter of the amount of tax that people should pay; but it was too late.

That news coupled with the whisper that a burger chain would set the CPI in future had done its worst.

You will have seen from his obituary that Facts was aged 2,372 and was buried, at his request, in the birthplace of Parliament - the Isle of Man. He is survived by two brothers Rumour and Dogma and a sister Shout Loudly.

Donations in his memory may be made to HMRC in a brown envelope marked “corporation tax”.

I hope that the CIOT pro-actively pick up the challenge in 2013 to ensure the resurrection of Facts and to protect his cousin Taxlaw from also being sent to an early grave.