People who pay cash in hand to tradesmen are “morally wrong”, damaging the economy and helping tax evaders, Treasury Minister David Gauke has warned. The report, in the Daily Telegraph, has produced over three thousand comments, nearly all of them hostile. Meanwhile, over at the Guardian, veteran warhorse Polly Toynbee has been sounding off about changes to the Council Tax benefit arrangements,...

Ministers are expected to abolish council tax for “annexes” to encourage pensioners to move in with relations. The Government will also consider overhauling planning rules to make it easier to adapt garages, etc. The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, said it was “fundamentally unfair” for households to be charged twice by paying council tax on their homes as well as the...

I am enjoying this row. It shows how idiotic the tax system has become.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance describes itself as a grassroots organisation, which we somehow doubt. It is pushing the sort of views which we would expect from an outfit funded by a millionaire. We are looking at its recent 2020 Tax Commission report and will be producing a critique shortly. It builds its argument on a body of feeling that is widespread. Our first inclination is to agree with quite...

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...

Schemes for a national ‘income tax’ in the UK have been ruled out as impracticable. The aim had been to introduce a tax system intended to be based on people’s “ability to pay”. Officials say it would take further three years just to conduct a nationwide survey of wages and salaries. Inspectors at HM Revenue & Customs had logged details of the wages paid to 25 million...