The right and wrongs of our taxing issues
From: John G Davies, Alma Terrace, East Morton, Keighley.
TONY Armitage is very complacent in his justification of tax avoidance (The Yorkshire
Post, November 9). His faulty logic pairs it with abuse of benefits, but the sums involved in the latter are minuscule in comparison with tax-dodging as are the effects on broader society.
Most of the earnings that wealthy people accrue are the result of many other people’s work. For example, a shopkeeper relies not only on his assistants, but also upon delivery men who in turn need the warehouse men and so on ad infinitum.
Beyond his immediate network, he also depends on a functioning transport infrastructure and all that entails. Then we all depend on the NHS to keep us well.
An important role of government, local and national, is to maintain this complex network and to do that it needs money. That money comes from taxation in all its forms.
Taxation is not the “burden” that some would portray it as; it is a moral obligation to contribute for our mutual benefit. The ultra-rich are impoverishing those who pay. Philip Green and Dominic Chappell for example “did nothing wrong”, but 11,000 people lost their jobs and many were denied a decent pension,
Another question comes out of the Paradise Papers: If the tax avoidance is legal why are secrecy and complex financial arrangements necessary?
From: Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley. THERE has been much ado about wealthy people legally investing funds in overseas territories, this bluster has been promoted by the BBC again attempting to make the news, rather than doing their original intended function, of reporting news.
The BBC’s beloved Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has the door conveniently opened for him again to make political capital based on envy; this pipsqueak has the effrontery to demand the Queen makes an apology for work done by her financial advisors.
However it was revealed on Question Time, one of the BBC’s flagship programmes, by Education Secretary Justine Greening that before the surprise General Election when the Government attempted to introduce three new laws to close tax avoidance opportunities, Labour voted against all three proposals.
Total hypocrisy from Labour, but then again what else can we expect from the Marxist-leaning shambles called the Opposition?
From: Bob Swallow, Townhead Avenue, Settle.
THE ‘Paradise Papers’ reveal a sordid state of affairs. I am not a fan of Jeremy Corbyn, yet he is right in what he says in that each organisation or person who indulges in one of these scams – and make no mistake that is what they are – is depriving the NHS, education, transport et al of the wherewithal to make capital available to them via taxation.
I suggest that with regard to the companies named, if every private person were to refuse to purchase from them and they were treated as what they are, pariahs, then they would soon change their methods of operating.
Regarding the number of MPs involved in these scams, clearly they want naming and shaming. Yet, looking to the future, what about legislation to the effect that on being elected to Parliament MPs should sign a declaration to the effect that they will not indulge in such a practice? If they do, and are found to be at fault, then they should be fired without ceremony and their pension entitlement cancelled. An MP should be above reproach. What a hope!