Like drug smuggling, money laundering and other organised crime, it is impossible to stamp out. It just has to be made as close to being not worth the effort as possible. The whole tax system should be massively simplified to cut out all these exemptions on which most tax evasion is based. Charge a fixed sum of tax on estimated wealth unless a tax return is received which appears to reflect that wealth.
Phillip Haran, Ruislip, Middlesex
Wee Joe Bloggs Engineering is going to the wall because Mega Multinational isn’t paying tax. It’s very important. Especially if you work for Wee Joe Bloggs. The heads of G20, including our prime minister, need to knuckle down and get it sorted. Revisions to multinational tax law are hardly a vote winner but it has to be done.
Stuart Brown, St Andrews, Fife
This is a crime and it is ultimately the poor who must pay to satisfy the greed of the rich. A court should be set up in The Hague to try such criminals with custodial sentences for the guilty. It is not sufficient, when found out, to pay the tax that has been avoided. The total amount in the scheme should be forfeited.
Hans Davidson, Milford on Sea, Hants
Companies must pay tax in the countries in which they do business. Sanctions for avoidance or evasion could include barring from government contracts and seizure of assets. Tax advisers should face similar sanctions.
Richard Bossom, Poole, Dorset
Evasion is against the law and should be prosecuted. Politicians are mischievous in conflating ‘aggressive avoidance’ with evasion. It isn’t, it is strict compliance with the law. Problem is, this is the result of an exces-sively complex tax code. Right answer is ‘simplify it’.
John Thorogood, Insch, Aberdeenshire
If tax is legally avoided and kept secret, then there will always be the suspicion that it is illegal tax evasion. Such things must be open to the tax authorities. The secrecy must end.
Stuart Kirby, Derby
Tax avoidance and evasion should be eliminated by drastically simplifying the tax system and removing the sta-tus of overseas territories and protected areas – if they are British then they pay our tax rates. I would remove all the tax-free allowances and accounts such as ISAs and apply 10% tax to all earnings, investments and inter-est to ensure a simpler system and a fair contribution from all.
Richard Young, Manchester
The individuals who have found themselves in these papers are just as bad as those who get accused of benefit fraud, from a moral point of view. Avoiding or evading tax will al-ways hap-pen from the top to the bottom and will never be stopped. Governments can put in the barriers but they will leave a cat flap in for those who want to use it. It is human nature.
Amarjit Singh, London
It is not a dilemma that I, and I suspect most chartered engineers, have lost sleep over. I would tighten the laws to stop avoidance and increase staff numbers investigating evasion.
Gary Lock, Dorking, Surrey
Human nature will never permit Utopia to exist.
Chris Jones, Derby
Tax avoidance should be stamped on. How you do it I have no idea. It galls me that as a small business we probably pay more tax than some of the large corporations.
Crawford Murray, Sussex
The line between tax avoidance and tax evasion has now become very blurred but if taxation was fairer then it would not matter. But when you impose silly taxes like the tax on hot pasties and extra bedrooms rather than simplify taxation, and allow the rich to pay less than those on PAYE, it is a recipe for unfairness and shows just how out of touch the wealthy and ruling elite have become. The sense of fairness in society has gone and greed among the well-off has become the norm.
Harish Narotham, Crewe, Cheshire
It is completely out of hand now. At one time it was really ‘just a game’ that did not have any effect on public services or the average working person. But now it is an international deception and manipulation. Company HQs are relocated to a country with ‘lower’ taxes and other benefits, while still operating at the same level in their home country and using its publicly funded facilities but not paying tax there. Yet another case of the rich get-ting richer and sup-porting each other and the poorer getting totally screwed in every way.
Anonymous