The government admitted today that 50p tax rate payers alone did more than £6 billion of tax avoidance on one income tax ruse alone.
But in September 2011 they said all tax avoidance over all taxes plus national insurance and VAT was just £5 billion.
Now, let's be clear, those numbers are irreconcilable. And it's also now impossible for them to say I'm wrong on the tax gap component of tax avoidance that I argue to be £25 billion - when they found a quarter of that in just one ruse, that they say would have continued.
So are they now going to admit that my figure for tax avoidance is right after all?
This could be interesting the next time they issue tax gap data - because it sure as heck can't include the absurdly low numbers it has done in the past again - because they've now very clearly admitted they're wrong.
Whichever way they turn it seems they confirm my data is more reliable than anything they admit to. There has to be a silver lining to their incompetence.
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You have joined the spam pile
I can waste no more time reading your comments
Obviously, your reaction to any argument you can’t win is to cover your ears.
keep up the good work. Looking forward to when tax avoiders finally get dumped on the spam file.
“The government admitted today that 50p tax rate payers alone did more than £6 billion of tax avoidance on one income tax ruse alone.”
Sorry, where did they admit that? Link please.
In their budget report – they show the shifting in there.
I don’t know why it suddenly has appeared so extraordinary that people brought forward income from 2010-11 into 2009-10. This was predicted at the time but now it appears to suddenly be the most profound, incredible thing.
It’s also interesting that you have made no mention of this bringing forward of income until now – why is that?
I used 2011/12 data for my work – for precisely this reason – and have said I expected a behavioural response in 2010/11
Your suggestion is wrong
You can’t have it both ways. Either this is true and the 50p rate generated far less than your estimates due to avoidance ( and therefore your tax gap estimate is accurate) or your estimate of the tax revenue raised by the 50p rate was incorrect- which is it?
Both are right.
My estimate for tax collected was for 2011/12.
The avoidance was in 2010/11 – I deliberately did not use the data for that year for that reason
So both can be true – tax avoidance can be much higher than expected but could be beaten to deliver the revenue I forecast