As the FT notes:

A tax lawyer this week called HMRC’s controversial plans to tax employees on income and benefits that have never been received as “unfair” and “immoral”.

James Quarmby, tax partner at law firm Thomas Eggar LLP, said the plans, introduced in the draft Finance Bill in December last year, were an “affront to the long cherished principles of our tax law” and added that this law “must be changed.”

The new rules are aimed at clamping done in disguised remuneration. This means employers who pay staff through trusts and similar arrangements in order to pay less tax will have to pay income tax and national insurance contributions immediately rather than deferring them.

This means, warns Quarmby, that income tax will be levied on employment income or benefits that have not actually been received from the employer and may never be received. The legislation states that the tax charge will still arise even if the employee has no legal right to any money or other benefit from the employer.

This is why the new law has been dubbed a “tax on fresh air”.

Bluntly what a complete load of twaddle.

There is an alternative to this absurd complaint made by this lawyer.

He could tell his clients to stop tax avoiding. That would solve the problem, once and for all.

But I bet it has never occurred to him.