Boris Johnson told Andrew Marr this morning, when discussing Starbucks and tax avoidance:
"I cannot exactly blame the finance directors of these companies for doing their job."
and
"Their salaries and livings depend on minimising the tax exposure obligations on their companies."
So, Johnson thinks it's fine, and even a duty, to avoid tax. He ignores the fact that right now tax is a zero-sum game. If cheating comnpanies do not pay someone else must, or services will suffer. So, he should be made to answer this question:
If you support tax cheating companies Boris, is that because you want ordinary, honest, people to pay it instead? Or would you rather cut services like education, health, law and order, defence and pensions?
He wasn't asked that question. But he should have been. And it's genuinely an either / or. Because asking honest ordinary people to pay more tax or suffer a loss of services is what political support for tax cheats now means.
And we know which side Boris Johnson is now on.
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and are we surprised?
If they are cheats they must have done something illegal, so why haven’t they been prosecuted by HMRC?
One can cheat without breaking the law
Tax avoidance is cheating
It ‘s not illegal – but nor is it definitely legal and it’s unethical for sure. Which is why it is cheating
And if not parliament and the court who decides what is cheating?
What a strange question?
See my blog this morning
Frequently the courts cannot decide and the case ends up in the Lords.
The narrow line of “legal” avoidance seems to change with each case.
It, at the moment, seems to depend upon each link in the avoidance chain having commercial reasons….but that’s this week.
If I, as self-employed, decide to buy coffee beans from abroad, and then list them as a business expense, being in engineering, I doubt it will be allowed… 😉
And we all know which side Boris The Buffoon is on. He’s on the side of Boris.
[…] person commenting on this blog this morning asked in the context of a blog I wrote on tax cheating : And if not parliament and […]
Hmmm, substitute ‘finance directors’ for, say, mafiosi, or drug dealers, or burglars, or arms traders, or some dictator’s head torturer, and would Boris complete the sentence the same way?
Presumably with arms traders he would, as that is legal, and profitable for this country.
Torturing seems to be legal in some countries, but less likely to be mentioned so approvingly in an interview (although we have apparently colluded in torture where it suited our masters).
So unfair that nobody has a good word for the mafiosi – not even Boris, not even when some of them buy up such prestigious properties in London.