Sweden has a surprising number of market traders. These make life difficult for the tax authorities trying to collect value added tax (MOMS), and they are now proposing that all market traders should get themselves a proper approved cash register and issue receipts to customers. The difficulty is that, first, approved cash registers are expensive, second, they need an electricity supply, and third,...

Since 2006, the Swedish government has been composed of an alliance of centre and conservative parties. These have implemented a variety of tweaks to the tax system. Some of them, such as a cut in the property tax, have been counter-productive, whilst others have been mildly beneficial. These include concessions for self-employed building workers, a cut in value added tax on restaurant meals, and...

I for one am sick of complaints about tax avoidance. It is legal and it arises because of the incompetence of legislators. The papers this weekend are full of ill-thought-out comment on the subject. Those who write this stuff, and most politicians, appear unable to grasp the most obvious fact: taxes on people’s earnings and companies’ profits are bound to be avoided and evaded. It cannot...

Richard Murphy of Tax Research, the think tank behind the Tax Justice Network, came up with this in response to a discusssion. And then closed the forum from further comments. “Whenever someone mentions tax and theft in the same phrase the response ‘anti-social libertarian’ (or worse) comes to mind. How about tax for redistribution? Or for repricing market failure? Or economic...

Ed Hammond and Jim Pickard write in the FT, “Wealthy homebuyers have already found loopholes to avoid paying the top stamp duty rate, less than a month after George Osborne introduced a higher levy as the centrepiece of his Budget… One of the new avoidance schemes, marketed by a handful of London-based solicitors, involves buyers signing multiyear leases that are automatically renewed...