Tax avoidance – ignoring the obvious

Tax avoidance has came back into the news with “revelations” that some of the government’s advisers have been doing it. The journalists and commentators who have latched on to this have, almost without exception, failed to notice that the tax system is inherently leaky. One might have at least thought that these champions of the people’s rights would have marked the fact that nobody is avoiding the business rate (apart from the loophole that lets people off if they knock the building down).

We repeat yet again: a tax on the rental value of land cannot be evaded, avoided or passed on.