NO HONOURS FOR TAX AVOIDERS !!

It's been reported that HMRC routinely blocks the award of honours to people whom it considers avoid paying enough tax. Apparently other government departments and agencies also have an input to the system, providing views on the 'suitability' of potential recipients.

A government spokesman has reportedly said that it is a "longstanding policy ….. to protect the integrity of the system". Really ? People taking perfectly legal steps to reduce the burden of tax upon them are routinely being denied recognition to protect the 'reputation' of the honours list; how can this possibly be right ?

For ever and a day, honours have been bestowed on individuals of dubious character but who have performed some supposedly valuable service. Honours have been handed out like sweeties to political appointees and apparatchiks, they are granted to pop singers and other third rate 'celebrities' for no reason other than that the recipients are in the public eye. These days, winning a gold medal seems to be an automatic route to an MBE, OBE or, if multiple medals, even a knighthood or damehood. How ridiculous !

To equate wholly legal tax avoidance, in which we should all engage if we can, with the illegal tax evasion, is simply wrong. To claim that the honours' system has a reputation which needs protecting is risible; its reputation was shot to pieces the day that the Beatles were given their MBEs by Harold Wilson's populist government in 1965 and it's been downhill ever since. What we have now is an utterly discredited system which is being abused in an attempt to appear fashionably moralistic. Are we really to believe that the modern day, high profile recipients of awards, many of whom are very wealthy, pay their taxes without considering perfectly legal ways to reduce the burden ?

There was a time when honours were awarded for services rendered over and above the call of duty. Now they're simply a way for government to court popularity and to pretend to moralistic values which they do not possess.

TAX AVOIDANCE PROPOSALS ARE THIN END OF WEDGE.

A long-standing principle of British law has been that there is a clear difference between 'tax evasion' and 'tax avoidance'. It has also been an accepted principal of the same law that 'the law is the law', in other words, the law is interpreted as it is written.

Now, all that is set to change. The Government is proposing to introduced sever penalties for anyone who advises people how to avoid tax; note, that this is about the wholly legal 'avoidance' rather than the clearly illegal 'evasion'. As the responsible department, the Treasury plans to introduce new rules designed to stop people using loopholes which were 'never intended' in the original legislation, in order to "root out" tax avoidance at source.

No one seems to be very bothered about this and yet it is an astonishing advance in the powers of the state. No longer will legislation have to be properly written, it will be sufficient for it to have an 'intention'. Separately, something which is absolutely legal in itself, tax avoidance, will be fully criminalised, even though successive Governments have actually introduced measures that specifically promote avoidance in schemes such as ISAs and SIPPs. Effectively, tax avoidance will no longer exist outside of approved Government schemes; all other avoidance will be treated as evasion, whatever the law actually says..

If the proposed measures do come into effect, it will be the beginning of the end for democracy and law in this country. Subsequently, any Government will be able to claim that anyone is in breach of any law because whatever they've done was 'intended'  to be outlawed, even if the relevant statute doesn't actually say so. Those who frame our legislation will become increasingly sloppy in its formation, relying on this principal to cover up their incompetence.

I find this shocking, appalling and terrifying. Why is there so little fuss about it ?