{"id":18740,"date":"2012-12-31T08:29:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-31T08:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=18740"},"modified":"2012-12-30T20:31:22","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T20:31:22","slug":"my-new-year-wish-from-the-ripped-of-britain-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/12\/31\/my-new-year-wish-from-the-ripped-of-britain-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"My New year wish &#8211; from the Ripped Of Britain blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blog.rippedoffbritons.com\/2012\/12\/new-years-resolution-tax-dodgers.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ripped Off\u00a0Britain\u00a0blog<\/a> asked me what my New year wish was. This is what I wrote:<\/p>\n<p><em>Can I shock the world and say what I\u2019d really like someone to do in the New Year has something to do with tax?<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><em>I believe in tax. I think it\u2019s the price we pay for living in a decent, democratic, wealth generating and wealth sharing democracy. I don\u2019t think we\u2019d have any of those things without a strong tax system. So I don\u2019t like tax cheats.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>They abuse the system, undermine democracy, increase inequality and leave decent people to pick up the bill \u2014 except that their capacity to do so is now at its limit.<\/em><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em>So what would I like someone to do? I\u2019d like a General Anti-Tax Avoidance Principle to be included in UK law. Not the nonsensical apology of a general anti-abuse rule that the government is proposing but something like the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/services.parliament.uk\/bills\/2012-13\/generalantitaxavoidanceprinciple.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Michael Meacher put to the House of Commons<\/a>\u00a0in September this year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Now, I am biased: I wrote\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/services.parliament.uk\/bills\/2012-13\/generalantitaxavoidanceprinciple.html\" target=\"_blank\">this Bill<\/a>. But it would stop tax avoidance in its tracks, make using tax havens hard, let H M Revenue &amp; Customs tackle companies like Google and rebalance the tax equation in favour of the honest and the poor.<\/em><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em>It could be done. That\u2019s why I have picked this option of the many available to me. The Bill is still waiting for its second reading in the Commons. The option of passing it is available.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>It\u2019s my New Year\u2019s wish that it reaches the statute book.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ripped Off\u00a0Britain\u00a0blog asked me what my New year wish was. This is what I wrote: Can I shock the world and say what I\u2019d<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/12\/31\/my-new-year-wish-from-the-ripped-of-britain-blog\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}