Monday 20 September 2010

Daily Mail or Bully Boy - Tax evasion

Today's Daily Mail headline is 'Clegg tax war on the better-off: Tens of thousands face 'bully boy' investigations in new crackdown'.

There is no pleasing some papers some times is there? Of course the Daily Mail is happy to attack any party that does not agree with it's agenda.

But why does the Daily Mail not think that tax evasion is some how ok. This is not bully boy tactics it is simply investigations to find Illegal tax evasion. There not knocking on the door with cricket bats threating to get you to pay more tax. The investigators are looking for people who have illegally not paid there tax.

I would go further than Nick Clegg who said that "Illegal evasion are 'just as bad' as falsely claiming benefits". I don't agree with Nick here, in my mind tax evasion is worse than benefit cheating. Why? Because in general benefit cheating is the poor claiming more than they should where as tax evasion is not paying tax when you already have plenty of money.

I'm also not sure why the Daily Mail thinks that people earning over £150k are their average middle class readers (The Daily Mail often sights the middle class).  Ok so some pay 50p on their income above this level through PAYE. However most middle class people simply do not earn this kind of money or if they do, their are only just over (less than 1% earn over £150k)

Also in defence of the attacks from the left, that say that the estimated £7billion over 5 years is not enough from the estimated £15billion per year of evaded tax. This is a fair attempt to get some of this tax money as it is hard to find and investigate. It's like illegal immigration, because it is illegal we don't actually know the numbers. Danny Alexander (Chief Secretary to the Treasury) could of easily claimed that the government were going to get more from this initiative because we simply don't know.

I also wonder if it's worth testing the Daily Mail. Perhaps Liberal Democrats could claim at conference that we are going to deport all the burka wearing muslim immigrants who are claiming for benefits from the state for their 10 children today. Lib Dems could add that their will now only be weekly bin collections, remove all taxes from the middle class onto the poor, remove unemployment benefit and ban gay people. Then I expect they will still find a reason to hate us. After all Clegg is a Nazi.

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