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Tice pitches that people should pay the minimum possible Tax, to cover up his own nefarious activities.

Whether they break the Law or not, Tax avoidance is as bad as Tax evasion in my eyes and always has been.

Tice may need to explain to his core vote the C and D categories who will rely more on public services than most, that by choice he will be destroying any concept of public services

That in part defines a reason why well off and wealthy do lean left and vote left. It is because we believe in equality of opportunity irrespective of what we were born in to, the polar opposite of the silver spoon brigade, but that wealth earned should be distributed via tax to the less well off, and inherited wealth should certainly be more equally distributed.

That does not allow the NEET state Boris, Truss and Sunak created however.

I will take to my grave my time spent in Sweden when Olaf Palme was in power, a high tax, world class public service system that rewarded enterprise and deliver hope and prosperity. A generation who glady contributed to the wonderful services provided by the State for the benefit of everyone.

Tax avoidance is legal.
Tax evasion is a crime.

Legal behaviour is not as bad as criminal behaviour and never has been.

If you don't want tax avoidance to happen, then change the law.

If taxes are complicated with exemptions then people will minimise tax by engaging in lawful avoidance, which is the system the politicians have created.

Flatter, simpler taxes without exemptions paid equitably by all are the way to go, but that requires simplifying our tax code.

But the accusation Neidle has made, AIUI, is that Tice is evading not avoiding.

Highly aggressive tax planning actually and the journalist who wrote the article, which Neidle assisted on, stated it was Avoidance.

https://x.com/gabriel_pogrund/status/2032951446593786219?s=61

I stand (well, sit with a cat on my lap) corrected.

Neidle appears to be phrasing his words to say the most accusatory thing he can without actually quite saying evading. Presumably out of concern of litigation.

It would come under GAAR, so a scheme that HMRC hadn't anticipated, which is termed "abusive, contrived, or abnormal tax avoidance arrangements" rather than using unpleasant terms such as evasion. Which is where HMRC's terminology contributes to the confusion between intended tax avoidance schemes (ISAs, pensions, EVs, cycle to work, season ticket loans etc) and unintended avoidance schemes such as setting up an REIT and offshore vehicles.

Axios: Some in [Trump's] inner circle have what one official called "buyer's remorse" —growing fears that attacking Iran was a mistake.


No shit, Sherlock.

But Bibi doesn't think so.

America got bounced. By a President who is bouncier than a bouncy ball.

If you had sat 10 random PB posters down and asked them for their prognosis of attacking Iran in the way that has happened, they would have come up with a day by day summary of what has come to pass.

Well, it would depend on the random sample. 1 of them might have said that the US would quickly win due to access to UFO-based supertechnologies.

Another would have blamed Ed Miliband.

That still might be the correct call.

For some it has been the right call on every issue, ever since it became irrelevant to blame Gordon Brown on every issue instead.

Tice pitches that people should pay the minimum possible Tax, to cover up his own nefarious activities.

Whether they break the Law or not, Tax avoidance is as bad as Tax evasion in my eyes and always has been.

Tice may need to explain to his core vote the C and D categories who will rely more on public services than most, that by choice he will be destroying any concept of public services

That in part defines a reason why well off and wealthy do lean left and vote left. It is because we believe in equality of opportunity irrespective of what we were born in to, the polar opposite of the silver spoon brigade, but that wealth earned should be distributed via tax to the less well off, and inherited wealth should certainly be more equally distributed.

That does not allow the NEET state Boris, Truss and Sunak created however.

I will take to my grave my time spent in Sweden when Olaf Palme was in power, a high tax, world class public service system that rewarded enterprise and deliver hope and prosperity. A generation who glady contributed to the wonderful services provided by the State for the benefit of everyone.

They are very different creatures. I (like most small business owners) avoid tax by taking dividends rather than salary. I could avoid tax by leasing an EV through my business and only pay 2% BIK, rather than full whack like I would for an ICE car. I avoided paying VAT on repairing my patio by doing the job myself.

Some of these are laws of unintended consequences (I've no idea why it's most tax efficient to take money as dividends, it's just how it is within our tax system), whilst others are very intentional - that 2% BIK exists purely to bribe me to buy a EV rather than an ICE car.

Evasion is where I ignore the rules entirely, eg I take cash from my customer and just pocket it, rather than pay VAT, Corp etc on it.

Mixing up the two does no-one any favours.

Tice pitches that people should pay the minimum possible Tax, to cover up his own nefarious activities.

Whether they break the Law or not, Tax avoidance is as bad as Tax evasion in my eyes and always has been.

Tice may need to explain to his core vote the C and D categories who will rely more on public services than most, that by choice he will be destroying any concept of public services

That in part defines a reason why well off and wealthy do lean left and vote left. It is because we believe in equality of opportunity irrespective of what we were born in to, the polar opposite of the silver spoon brigade, but that wealth earned should be distributed via tax to the less well off, and inherited wealth should certainly be more equally distributed.

That does not allow the NEET state Boris, Truss and Sunak created however.

I will take to my grave my time spent in Sweden when Olaf Palme was in power, a high tax, world class public service system that rewarded enterprise and deliver hope and prosperity. A generation who glady contributed to the wonderful services provided by the State for the benefit of everyone.

Tax avoidance is legal.
Tax evasion is a crime.

Legal behaviour is not as bad as criminal behaviour and never has been.

If you don't want tax avoidance to happen, then change the law.

If taxes are complicated with exemptions then people will minimise tax by engaging in lawful avoidance, which is the system the politicians have created.

Flatter, simpler taxes without exemptions paid equitably by all are the way to go, but that requires simplifying our tax code.

Tax avoidance and tax evasion are plainly not the same thing. One is legal use of rules Parliament wrote, the other is breaking them. Pretending they are morally identical is just sloganeering for people who can’t be bothered with detail.

That said, “legal” is not the same as “defensible”, especially for politicians who like to wrap themselves in flag, family and ordinary taxpayer cosplay while using structures most ordinary taxpayers will never see in their lives.

So the right test is fairly simple:
if Tice acted lawfully, then it isn’t evasion;
if the structure was artificial and didn’t meet the rules, HMRC should flatten him;
and if he wants to preach about how everyone should minimise tax, he can also explain which services he’d cut for the voters he claims to represent.

There isn't a bright line between the two things (which is why General Anti-Abuse Rules were introduced a decade ago.)

Yes, quite.

The line between avoidance and evasion may not always be bright, especially once you get into artificial arrangements and the territory GAAR was designed to police.

But that is really the point, not a defence.

A politician should be steering miles clear of murky grey areas, not tiptoeing up to the boundary and then acting offended when people question it. “Not proven illegal” is a pretty feeble standard for someone asking voters to trust his judgment.

I agree.
Any politician claiming "patriotism", and indulging in schemes like that, deserves ridicule. At the very least.

Tice pitches that people should pay the minimum possible Tax, to cover up his own nefarious activities.

Whether they break the Law or not, Tax avoidance is as bad as Tax evasion in my eyes and always has been.

Tice may need to explain to his core vote the C and D categories who will rely more on public services than most, that by choice he will be destroying any concept of public services

That in part defines a reason why well off and wealthy do lean left and vote left. It is because we believe in equality of opportunity irrespective of what we were born in to, the polar opposite of the silver spoon brigade, but that wealth earned should be distributed via tax to the less well off, and inherited wealth should certainly be more equally distributed.

That does not allow the NEET state Boris, Truss and Sunak created however.

I will take to my grave my time spent in Sweden when Olaf Palme was in power, a high tax, world class public service system that rewarded enterprise and deliver hope and prosperity. A generation who glady contributed to the wonderful services provided by the State for the benefit of everyone.

Tax avoidance is legal.
Tax evasion is a crime.

Legal behaviour is not as bad as criminal behaviour and never has been.

If you don't want tax avoidance to happen, then change the law.

If taxes are complicated with exemptions then people will minimise tax by engaging in lawful avoidance, which is the system the politicians have created.

Flatter, simpler taxes without exemptions paid equitably by all are the way to go, but that requires simplifying our tax code.

Tax avoidance and tax evasion are plainly not the same thing. One is legal use of rules Parliament wrote, the other is breaking them. Pretending they are morally identical is just sloganeering for people who can’t be bothered with detail.

That said, “legal” is not the same as “defensible”, especially for politicians who like to wrap themselves in flag, family and ordinary taxpayer cosplay while using structures most ordinary taxpayers will never see in their lives.

So the right test is fairly simple:
if Tice acted lawfully, then it isn’t evasion;
if the structure was artificial and didn’t meet the rules, HMRC should flatten him;
and if he wants to preach about how everyone should minimise tax, he can also explain which services he’d cut for the voters he claims to represent.

When the Tax Gap clowns got going, one was to get banned from Murphy’s blog was to point out that about 90% of the Tax Gap is

- the personal tax allowance
- Saving for pensions
- ISAs

For even more fun, Gordon Brown introduced rules making it obligatory for Financial Advisor to advocate pensions and ISAs to their clients.

The personal allowance, pensions and ISAs are not the issue. They are explicit, mass-market reliefs built into the system on purpose.

Aggressive avoidance through specialist vehicles is a different matter entirely, even if it remains lawful unless HMRC knocks it over.

So “people use ISAs” is not a rebuttal. It’s just an attempt to blur the line between ordinary tax planning and behaviour that is technically legal but politically and morally grubby.

If Tice did nothing beyond the equivalent of using an ISA, fine. If he used contrived structures beyond the reach of normal taxpayers while selling himself as their tribune, then criticism is entirely fair.

But where is the line? It’s drawn by HMRC

After all, we were told that it was trivial for farmers to put everything in trust - or is that beyond the bounds now?

They can stop what Tice is doing in an afternoon.

They need to follow due process, investigate and get a response from Tice. That will take more than an afternoon.

A lot of twaddle being talked by non-experts here about what Tice has done and whether it is avoidance or evasion, and what those labels actually mean.

Evasion requires dishonesty. There's no single offence of tax evasion, there's common law cheating the revenue and then there's lots of statutory offences, but dishonesty is the key, usually some sort of deception about the existence of something or its true nature.

Avoidance means different things to different people. But if we take it to mean obtaining a tax advantage without dishonesty but in circumstances where parliament did not intend the advantage to be given, then most avoidance these days is doomed to fail, because there are so many anti avoidance rules even before the GAAR might come into play, because most avoidance schemes involve a degree of circularity or some other artificiality, and because the courts are completely unsympathetic.

Some people use the avoidance label to mean wholly intended tax advantages like using your ISA allowance. Those people need psychological rather than legal help.

How do we think Trump will respond to Europe uniformly rejecting his demand for help in Hormuz when he wakes up?

Calmly and through usual diplomatic channels?

He can tell them they have a choice between pulling their weight and submitting to Russia.

Your conclusion from the Ukraine war is that Russia could succeed in a broader war against Europe that would force us to submit to them without US help?

You only need to pull your weight in a conflict you've agreed to take part in. We didn't agree to take part, so no weight pulling necessary.

If anyone the lesson of the last four years is that the great military powers are not as dominant in imposing their will on others as they previously thought they were.

I’m talking about energy policy. If the straits of Hormuz stay closed and energy prices start causing major economic problems, the Bart de Wever view that Europe should normalise trade with Russia will gain ground.

What BdW said in his interview with L'Echo was...

Un deal avec la Russie semble la seule solution envisageable.

His broader thesis is that the policy of buggering on until Russia surrenders isn't working and can't ever work because the US is just not that into it. So there is going to have to be a deal and a normalisation of relations.

Meanwhile Russian social media has started pushing the fictitious existence of a People's Republic of Narva in Eastern Estonia, a direct copy of the tactics in the Donbas in 2014.

There's no deal possible with Russia because Russia isn't interested in a deal short of European subservience to a Russian Empire.

I'm not 100% confident in Europe coming to Estonia's aid at a time when European cities and infrastructure will be very vulnerable to Russian missiles.

People should prepare themselves psychologically for war. There's a real risk of it happening and of our pretensions of military superiority over Russia being shattered.

Axios: Some in [Trump's] inner circle have what one official called "buyer's remorse" —growing fears that attacking Iran was a mistake.


No shit, Sherlock.

But Bibi doesn't think so.

America got bounced. By a President who is bouncier than a bouncy ball.

If you had sat 10 random PB posters down and asked them for their prognosis of attacking Iran in the way that has happened, they would have come up with a day by day summary of what has come to pass.

Well, it would depend on the random sample. 1 of them might have said that the US would quickly win due to access to UFO-based supertechnologies.

Another would have blamed Ed Miliband.