If the Government were less greedy in taxing income and pensions, it would drive fewer offshore
SIR – As I am continuing to work past my retirement age, I am currently taxed not only on my earnings but on my meagre personal pension.
Had I the finances and opportunities of those in the Paradise Papers being pilloried for finding legal ways of holding on to more of the money they have earned, I would follow their lead.
Until we get a fairer tax system, people will continue to find ways of preventing the tax authorities grabbing their earnings.
The answer is to simplify the tax system and for the Government to be less greedy, and then it will find that people no longer need to find complicated ways of legally avoiding tax. The Government will actually raise more in revenue by doing this.
Derek Bennett
Walsall, Staffordshire
SIR – If it were not for those who legally build up their capital offshore at reasonable tax rates, there would be massively less investment onshore.
Having never taken advantage of offshore schemes, I know how my wife and I face wipeout from the tax man at every turn.
If we sell long-held assets, we are charged “capital gains tax” when we have made no real gain at all – so instead of selling and investing in new projects, we are stuck.
I know that business rates are so crippling that when my income fell by 50 per cent, my taxes went up by 50 per cent. I know that when we consider selling a house to downsize and provide a good home for a younger family, crippling stamp duty stops both buyer and seller. And if you dare to buy a house before you can sell your own (in a market stagnant for years) you are regarded as a “secondhome owner” and must pay extra tax on the house you bought.
Taxes are the Government’s burden on the people. There is a far more democratic tax, which brings down prices for the consumer (rather than raising money for the state), and that is called competition.
But that supposes the Government has the same interests as the people. It doesn’t. Today, even a Conservative Government seems to be just another form of socialism.
Rodney Atkinson
Stocksfield, Northumberland
SIR – Oh dear! The BBC is at it again with its crass over-reporting of the offshore accounts affair.
It was ludicrous seeing the grim faces and then the reporter posted outside Buckingham Palace at 10 o’clock at night. Put into one of its sitcoms, this might produce a grimace of sorts.
Well, at least we had a break from Brexit and moralising sex scandals.
Helen Boxall
Dursley, Gloucestershire
SIR – The self-righteous tone of BBC coverage of the so-called Paradise Papers, and the door-stepping of celebrities for their perfectly legal transactions, sit ill with the behaviour of an organisation that has paid exorbitant sums of public money to employees through companies and allows outsourcing to production companies, enabling actors to engage in precisely the activities it disparages.
Michael Staples
Seaford, East Sussex
SIR – Jeremy Corbyn must be blind not to see that oil-rich Venezuela perfectly illustrates how allowing the state to control and spend its people’s money drives them into poverty.
Little wonder we do what we can to hang on to what we have got through ISAS and other lawful means. Would you trust them with your money?
Brian Christley
Abergele, Conwy
SIR – We should be grateful for offshore tax havens. The Duchy of Lancaster was able to invest money offshore, rather than follow the example of the Duchy of Cornwall. The world needs only so many overpriced biscuits.
Hugh Neve
Littlehampton, West Sussex