Sorry,i should have made that clearer,if you were a PAYE tax payer. If you are self employed,most people employ an accountant so as to keep their tax bill down as low as possible,which in a way is what Jimmy Carr and co are doing anyway,although of course they are taking it to an extreme.
Not really the same thing at all. If you run a business then filing a tax return can be a complicated process which many people will not know how to do, or even if they do know how, do not want to go through all the sums themselves. Nothing dodgy is implied by hiring a tax accountant. To answer your question though, it's extremely likely that HMRC will catch up to you and send you a bill, this happened to my girlfriend (although she didn't know she had underpaid, at least that's what she told me!)
I once claimed tax benefits for my son believing he would be back at school in the next term, but he didn't go so I had been overpaid. I contacted them, but they let me off. On the form they sent me, scrawled across the bottom it said..volunteered information, don't ask for repayment. Honesty can be the best policy.
Lol,you could bet your life they would catch up with a normal PAYE employee if they owed them anything. Nice to hear they let you off Fran,like you say,perhaps honesty is the best policy.
Hoadie can't be a racist ! Apparently, using the "I" word is no longer a hate crime. Even Mr. Millibean is apologising for unrestrained immigration - for what that's worth!
Stand-up comedy is just a joke really. They're all celebrities now, appearing on panel shows and the like, recycling their "material" and flogging their DVDs. Stewart Lee is the only good one left.
No, but they haven't always gone on Mock the Week and re-used old material under the pretense that they are improvising. They even try to weave it into conversation! It's sickening.
Haha..what you think of Jimmy Carr is your own opinion. But who in their right mind really wants to pay tax? If someone told you that you could pay less tax and that it was legal, who wouldn't do it? No-one seems to have brought up Lewis Hamilton or David Coulthard who 'live' in Monaco, or Amazon who's tiny 'head office' is based in Luxembourg. These are just the same but Carr has been brought to the attention by the PM. Does it make it right? Well it's not against the law, but many people do it, and that is why Carr can count himself unlucky for being targeted.
I am one of the most law abiding people you can meet and I also have strong moral standards which stops me cheating anyone, but I would pay less tax if it was legal (which is why I have an ISA). However, I do feel you have a moral duty to pay tax if you already have more money than you could spend and have earnt it in this country. Fair play to people like JK Rowling who says she pays her taxes in the UK because the welfare state helped her when she was down.
I think we should all take stock of what is being said here. On the one hand you have a perfectly legal way of tax avoidance but on the other hand is it moral? However in reality it is only people that have a lot of money that can really take advantage of it. So it is not therefore open to all, just the privileged. Like the rest of us they have used the gp's, hospitals + other free services and no doubt they will expect their government pension when it becomes due. No doubt they will expect the roads to be kept in repair so that they can drive their nice big cars with out too much hassle. So somehow I think they have a moral duty as well to pay their taxes. Britain in particular has been very lax over the years in sorting out these tax avoidance schemes. As others have said because it's legal it doesn't make it right!! Most of the developed nations have stopped these tax avoidance schemes but as one loop hole is closed, so you have someone that finds another. Perhaps it is to these people that we should be actually taking task with. As it is a deliberate attempt to avoid paying tax one must question the legality of trying find ways of avoiding it. Finding ways of reducing the tax you have to pay is one thing to avoid it altogether is wrong. (I'll get off me soap box now)
Some of the ways of reducing your tax liabilities are because the Government is trying to encourage that behaviour, so the recently discussed tax-exemption for charitable giving. Very few would disagree with these. There is all the difference in the world between those which seek to minimise tax liability and those which seek to eradicate it. I am not sure that it is wise to talk about a morality here, but surely as a rule of thumb any tax management scheme which allows wealthy individuals or Companies to pay less than the basic rate of tax for standard tax payers should surely reflect upon whether than is equitable? It is easy to say, "if it's legal then it's ok" but then sometimes the law large behind public opinion. Until relatively recently, it was legal to pay men and woman different rates for exactly the same work. Was that legal? At the time, yes. Enlightened employers decided that it was not good practise before the law was changed. it's surely better to be ahead of the curve in this one. I think that what we need is more transparency on this which would allow fear of public censure to shape behaviour. On a side note, I have always thought those who complain about the amount of tax which they pay to be rather ridiculous. Personally, I wish that I paid £10m in tax per year since that would mean I earned a fortune. People have a choice where they live and can always move to parts of the world with no free health service or social safety-net if they want to avoid that tax. It's frustrating when these same people claim their right to be afforded the rights and protections of UK citizenship when they are not willing to pay their share of the associated costs. It always strikes me as funny that it's often the ex-pats who are most critical of our Country, and yet are equally scathing in other ways about their new adopted homes.
True. JK will have to struggle on and survive on the £400m she'll have left after tax. Good to see that she's content with that (some wouldn't be)!
But that's the point. What are other multi-millionnaires doing by trying to escape paying taxes when they can't possibly need what they've got.
They don't see it as income. It's chips in a game of power and wealth. They don't need a small fraction of the money for their own lifestyle; they need it as stake money in the "game".
Comes down to power, greed and vanity. There is only so much money you can spend on yourself. Business empires don't get built by giving money away.
Curious reading some of these comments as I was really chuffed that the obnoxious Jimmy Carr was pulled up last weekend even though he hasn't committed a crime. Worth remembering that this is bloke who finds rape to be a great subject for his humour. I totally agree with Cameron's remark although I feel that it was opportunist to say the least and also a remark that was likely to come back and haunt him. Great to see that journalists have subsequently found that his late father was invlved in a similar scheme which was about three times the value of Carr's avoidance. Coupled with this, it now seems highly likely that the likes of Lord Ashcroft will get roped in and you can see a similar scandal brewing of the magnitude of the previous expenses issue. I'm really surprised by the Liberals going into partnership with the Tories although I will be pleased is they get tarred with the same brush and end up getting stuffed in the new election as this will give labour a wider majority and should allow them to pursue a far more Left wing agenda than Blair's government. Labour , I am sure, will do the utmost to rectify these faults. Picking up on some of the other comments (by Fran, I think) about benefit scroungers I feel obliged to point out that the extent of the problem is miniscule. There were some statistics being abnded about after Christmas which chastised all parties as the percentage of the country's revenue which is spent on benefit is something like 2% of our GDP. If itwasn't for papers like the Mail and the Express, no one would know about these kinds of fraud as they are rare. As far as scroungers are concerned, I have this to say:- 1. Are they really so stupid not to work if the state provides the opportunity not to? 2. By giving people money to spend who otherwise receive nothing, this will assist the economy as they most dispose of this income somehow. 3. Most unemployed people want to find work. There are a few people who are uncapable of working either through disability or simply because they are not reliable or lack intelligence. Companies will never want to employ such characters and they are probably best left outside the job market where they can do less damage. 4. If you elect to live on benefits by choice then this will impinge upon your quality of life meaning that you will be likely to miss out on holidays, new cars, high expedniture good, etc. Cheers Ian 4. If you
