IT IS NOT IMMORAL to legally avoid paying taxes. The over mighty state in the manifestation of one David Cameron, shamed the comedian Jimmy Carr into making an apology for parking his money in Jersey to avoid the tax man. It is money he has earned, and it is his money, not the states. He never made it from drugs or any other illegal practice; he merely took the option of not allowing as much of it as he could, from being taken from him, only to find it being spent by wasteful politicians and civil servants.
Billions of tax payers pounds have been wasted by such sources; the list is endless, but the most eye-watering example of such larceny by a public body is the Ministry of Defence and its dire procurement department where tax pounds are doled out rather than efficiently spent. Project after project has been blundered into, as if what they were spending was being printed as they spent it.
Remember the millions wasted on a new high tech computer programme for the NHS? And what of all those private consultants, Quangos and abuses of the expenses system by those now describing a comedians behaviour as immoral.
Cameron knows all too well the billions in waste that an administration accrues over a period in office. It ill behoves our prime minister to chastise a single individual as if he were merely the custodian, instead of the proprietor of his own wealth.
The Conservative Party used to believe in low taxes as an incentive – after all, there is nothing fare about taxation. What it means is, that the tax payer or employee works for the state instead of for him or herself and their families for part of their working week. If the state takes 20 percent of their salary in taxes, it amounts to a fifth of their wages, or, if someone earns £400 per week it would amount to a day’s wages of £80 (based on a five day week) – so for one day of their working week, they would be working for the state.
In one sense, the working population is working either wholly or partly for the state. What is more, the politicians no longer sees taxation as a sad but necessary obligation on the part of the people (if , that is, they ever did); but they behave today as if part of the citizens salary is theirs to harvest, almost by Divine Right.
I find it incredulous for David Cameron to suggest a person is behaving immorally in trying to hold on to as much of his income as he can. What used once to be immoral in this country (until the 18th century) was the very idea of taxation at all. The soliciting of funds from working people by politicians has grown incrementally in accordance with the wastefulness and ill- timed foolish policies of our democratic representatives.
I HAVE NO SYMAPTHY for Jimmy Carr as a person; but as a taxpayer, he is surely entitled to keep as much of his earned income as he can legally secure. If politicians leave loop-holes for the rich to take advantage of then they should do so. They should do so because the state penalises the accumulation of wealth as if it were a criminal activity instead of a vehicle for ambition and new job creation resulting in financial security for families as well as growth for the country.
If the rich have to pay more than say five pence in the pound more than any other citizen, then it is their moral duty to find legal ways of ridding themselves of this burden. The rich are not averse to reasonable forms of taxation, but the politicians (especially those who call themselves socialist) have a system of fairness that does not correspond with any form of reason, but has the accumulated history of class hatred attached to it.
The rich, like everyone else has to pay taxes, but why they have to pay more than a reasonable amount above those taken from the ordinary taxpayer, has more to do with envy than any concept of justice. In France today the rich are about to be milked of 75 per cent (in the UK, for part of the 1970s, it was 90 per cent) of the yearly income under the presidency of Hollande. I never felt I would feel sorry for people in a much more favourable state of wealth than myself; but what is about to happen in France will only discourage wealth creation and will ultimately add to France’s deficit and pull a veil over the country’s free market approach to wealth creation.
We in this country must welcome those ill-treated by their new government’s profligacy to our shores. They may turn out to be the modern Huguenots who also escaped persecution in France.
JIMMY CARR IS THE HYPOCRITE SUPREME. He has, through his stage act, satirised the greedy bankers, and opened himself up to the charge of being a charlatan. Mr Carr is a supporter of the Labour Party and he deserves his present embarrassment. He does so because he has sought a legal means of protecting as much of his earnings as he may, while traducing Labours spiritual enemies – the wretched bonus taking bankers.
Mr Carr would have, had it not been for David Cameron’s intervention, regarded himself as being part of the popular ‘progressive’ Left, and therefore exempt from the Left’s barbs.
But David Cameron drew him out and brought forth his contrition. If only Carr had not blinked when faced with the prime minister’s rebuke; he could have carried on doing what he was ‘morally’ obliged to do – this was to secure his own and his families prospect.
It now seems that Mr Carr has fallen fowl of his own supporters on the comedy circuit. Reports of being booed have accompanied him on his latest ‘gigs’.
Mr Carr is a hypocrite for condemning wealth and the various ways by which it avoids paying taxes. He is now contrite and hopefully exonerated by the public he draws to himself. Please let me earn more, seems to be his appeal to his public, and I will in future pay the taxes accordingly.
But he should not have the charge of acting immorally thrust at him by, of all people, a prime minister no less. Cameron should have kept his mouth shut, for now a witch-hunt may ensue and one wonders how many of our prime ministers friends and associates will all foul of the pursuers.
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