This morning’s Today interview

Posted on April 11 2012

Listen again to this morning's discussion on tax avoidance on Radio 4's Today programme:

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8 Responses

  1. sickoftaxdodgers says:
    April 11 2012 at 9:19 am

    I’ll try and catch up with that, and the Newsnight interview tonight Richard. To be honest, I used to listen to the Today program religiously, but these days I avoid it a lot as so much of the news these days just depresses or infuriates me; not a good way to start the day really.
    I’m assuming the subject will be the cap on tax relief for charitable giving?

  2. Ian Stevenson says:
    April 11 2012 at 9:23 am

    Liddell-Granger is my MP. He had reservations about individual tax transparency but seemed to be in agreement with you about companies and even ‘very rich individuals’.
    There might be hope that even some Tories can work with you-to an extent. Not all of them are wannabe Republicans; there is the ‘one nation’ tradition and it is entirely dead.

  3. Tom Howells says:
    April 11 2012 at 9:25 am

    If saving into an ISA is not tax avoidance then neither is an additional rate taxpayer paying into a pension, investing in a EIS or VCT. But all these are highly likely to explain why the richest only pay an effective rate of 10%. Yet all these are effectively lumped together as “avoidance”.

    • Richard Murphy says:
      April 11 2012 at 12:27 pm

      I would suggest that they were created with that intent in mind

      And I ask what the state is doing subsidising the savings of the rich

      • Tom Howells says:
        April 11 2012 at 3:39 pm

        “I would suggest that they were created with that intent in mind”

        So by definition they cannot be avoidance then as that is Parliament’s will. That’s assuming one accepts your premise.

      • Richard Murphy says:
        April 11 2012 at 6:13 pm

        So I can now say they were intended to encourage avoidance, and did

      • jonny maddox says:
        April 12 2012 at 1:21 pm

        You ask what the state is doing subsidising the savings of the rich. I would go further than that: why are pension funds exempt from capital gains tax? Why don’t they pay tax on interest received. And for that matter why do charities receive similar subsidies from the state: no stamp duty, exemption from rates, no corporation tax etc. Why should poor taxpayers have to subsidise pension schemes and charities like this?