Tax protest outside the Ritz

DJeep | 01.11.2012 17:18 | Social Struggles

Protesters assembled outside the Ritz hotel to voice their anger over the hotel-owners' tax avoidance schemes.

Tax protest outside the Ritz

Anger over Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay's tax-dodging lead to a protest outside the Ritz hotel, which is owned by the billionaire twins.

Some banners called for the Barclay brothers to pay “fair for austerity”, while others simply stated that the “Barclay Bros Hate England”.

The activists were soon ushered away by hotel security.
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It was recently revealed that the tax-dodgers cost the UK an aggregate loss that would be otherwise be sufficient to pay cover the national deficit.

The Barclay twins, who are officially registered in Monaco, are currently suing the HMRC for £1BN through their company Littlewoods.

DJeep
Homepage: http://barclaybrothers.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/the-littlewoods-tax-case-or-how-the-barclay-brothers-sued-the-hmrc-for-1bn/

Comments

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Question about terms

01.11.2012 18:04

I know words are often used differently over here than you use them.

But this story seems to indicate people treating as indistinguishable "tax avoidance" and "tax dodging".

a) Do you folks use these two terms as meaning approximately the same thing?

b) Over here "tax dodging" means ILLEGALLY not paying taxes, trying to not pay some tax that one is required to pay according to the tax laws, while "tax avoidance" means arranging ones financial affairs in such a way that the taxes required to be paid according to the tax laws are minimized. Of course one CAN arrange ones financial affairs so as to have to pay more tax than otherwise and many forms have a box to check off if you want to volunteer to pay more tax than you are required to. Few if any people do that.

If you so use "tax avoidance" and "tax dodging" interchangeably, what terms do you assign to the two very different things I described in "b"?

If you don't think of those two things as very different, are you people who yourselves voluntarily pay more taxes than you are required to?

MDN

Tchnicaly

01.11.2012 23:08

Tax avoidance is "legal", tax evasion is "illegal". I think the term 'dodging' is meant to blur the distinction. It's a political thing! The protesters want the state to take more money from the business.

anarchist