Choose life: choose to pay tax

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Art Uncut have an article in the Guardian this morning on their objectives. They say:

Art Uncut aims to bring about a culture shift, to create a world where people automatically and instinctively think about tax ethically.

First, we want to empower people to "Just Say No!" to the tax accountant.

Hear, hear, I say.

And by chance my old blogging friend Dennis Howlett sent me a link, this morning to an article by J K Rowling written a year or so ago in which she said:

Now, I never, ever, expected to find myself in a position where I could understand, from personal experience, the choices and temptations open to a man as rich as Lord Ashcroft. The fact remains that the first time I ever met my recently retired accountant, he put it to me point-blank: would I organise my money around my life, or my life around my money? If the latter, it was time to relocate to Ireland, Monaco, or possibly Belize.

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain's; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

Hear, hear again I say.

The evidence that a person can be ethical about tax is proven. The evidence that some accountants recognise the issue is alos laid bare for all to see.

So why aren't there more who do just that? Who say 'choose life, choose to pay tax'?

 


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