iirc Jimmy Carr used an offshore dodge to avoid paying takes which David Cameron then described as morally wrong. He just only two years previously cashed in his shares of a company which had spent 30 years not paying tax in the UK which neglected to declare his stakes in.

Neither was illegal but one taking the high ground, calling the other "morally wrong" and then asking to be trusted to clamp down on such behaviour seems a little suspect. No?

Don't hold your breath waiting for Octavious to condemn Cameron for his obvious double standards.

@ Octavious: "It is part of our tax system's design."

Well, yeah, that's the problem though, isn't it?

Cameron and Osborne have turned the UK itself, never mind our faded colonies, into a tax haven. London is the global hub of the tax avoidance industry. The UK's current government cannot, in fact, complain about tax avoidance, because their policy is to enable it, to encourage it, and to foster an industry founded on it.

The UK's tax system is now founded on the basis of taxing poor people only - because anyone who is, in the words of a recently-vocal Tory MP, a "high achiever", ought to be avoiding or evading as much tax as possible. After all, that's the British way.

Tax avoidance disgusts me, for what it's worth.

I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilisation. Anyone who is not willing to pay their fair share of taxes should be excluded from our civilisation. They should enjoy no legal protections while in our country. They should be unable to call the police if the victim of a crime, for example.

Octaviouis is presumably of the "everybody does it" school, which holds that tax avoidance isn't a problem, because most rich parasites do it.

For me, the UK needs to start cancelling the citizenship rights of wealthy tax-dodgers.

That might focus their attention.

Everyone should pay 100% of their income to the government.

Taxation exists primarily to give value to currency and as a brake on inflation. Government does not tax in order to spend. Government taxes in order to keep its citizens from spending more money.

@ Jamie

It's been part of the UKs tax system design for decades. It is not tax dodging. HMRC use tax to generate revenue and to encourage or discourage certain types of spending and investment. The gift option is not a loophole, but part of the design of the system in the same way that an ISA is and in the same way that VAT not existing on necessities is.

Of course everyone is welcome to pay more tax if they wish to. The mechanism is there, but seldom used surprisingly enough. As you enjoy paying tax so much naturally you are aware of this and use it regularly?

@putin, i disagree.

Historically taxation existed to allow a state to exist. It wasn't necessarily currency which was used, you could tax in grain. The ability to use force to extract value (making people your subjects) and thus also pay for an army (to enforce the taxation system) is instrumental in the formation of the first states.

The economics you're describing were not well understood until much later, and when you have a gold standard, or actual gold/silver based currency the inly way to 'print more money' is to debase your currency by physically recasting smaller coins or mixing metals to have a lower percentage of gold... Which happened in empire from time to time.

Whether people used coinage or the point of taxation in the modern states has changed is interesting... I'd love to know more details, like when did it change, when did economic theory affect public policy... What questions am i not even asking??

@Hellenic Riot, @Octavious and all others that have a vote in the referendum. EU is the club of civilised nations in Europe. Why would you leave this exclusive club and follow the lead of the xenophobics in UKIP? Why would you leave and side along with nationalistic trash and nations like Russia and Turkey? I and many Europeans have high expectations and lots of respect for your civilised country as it is now. But if you would leave, your moral marks would go from AAA+ down to trash status. Don't do it!!

The EU is not a mark of civilisation. Are Switzerland and Norway some sort of Barbaric dictatorships now or something?

Britain is not going to turn into some sort of dictatorship like Russia or Turkey overnight. And UKIP are most definitely not going to get anywhere in our parliament (FPTP prevents that). If the polls are right and Labour keep extending their advantage (big if) then we'll have a properly socialist government in 2020. If not we'll have Boris Johnson. Who might be a crazy and conservative buffoon; but still isn't a dictator-in-waiting.

No-one listen much to what Norway or Switzerland say since they are not members and they choose to stay outside mostly due to nationalistic reasons. The moral respect they enjoy is much lower than it would have been if they had been members.

Moral respect? They are not listened to by EU member states on EU issues, which include free-market rules, that they have chosen to enforce in order to have access to the common market.

But what moral respect are they missing?

NB: they are also members of the Council of Europe, who (along with Russia and i think Turkey, but not Belarus) have signed European Charger of Human Rights, and agreed to ban capital punishment - that is, no country anywhere in Europe punishes it's own citizens by executing them. Two great examples of morality on a pan european scale, which extend way beyond the EU's borders.

Infact: "Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, the former Prime Minister of Norway was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe in September 2009. In June 2014, he was re-elected" - i believe Norway enjoys much moral acclaim inside Europe. See:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Europe

Nations are not judged by how some few individuals behave but how the nation as a whole behaves. Their collective decision to as a nation stay outside the civilised club is what matters. And it would be even worse if you would collectively choose to leave. Stay in and you will continue to be my dear European friends!

"Historically taxation existed to allow a state to exist. It wasn't necessarily currency which was used, you could tax in grain."

In the area of West Africa historically known as the "Gold Coast", the British wanted the local population to work on their coffee plantations, but the local population had no system of currency. Theirs was an entirely social economy. In order to compel the population to work on their plantations the British implemented a hut tax which required payment in British pounds, which they could only get by working at the coffee plantations. So they paid the pounds first before they collected the tax. Similar schemes to induce wage labor via taxation existed in much of colonial Africa.

Christine Desan wrote a very interesting book on this subject, in which she details how the same process happened in England - i.e. that England created demand for money via taxation. Taxation's purpose was not for gaining resources to spend.

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1829

Interesting, but i don't think it is valid to take a colonial example and expand it to modern nation-states (or ancient city-states/empires... Actually seeing how the Romans managed to extract value from provinces to pay for their legions would be an interesing comparison to see how well your point generalises!)

@Peterfund - again, Norway is a member of the (47 state) Council of Europe. As a nation, not only as an individual who happens to be a former Prime minister...

Maybe Peterlund is referring to the EEA. There are only three non-EU EEA members and they have little say in certain directives issued by the EU. For example, the EU issued a pipeline directive in the late 1990s that the Norwegian government opposed but they had no input in the matter. The UK took up their cause and amended the agreement to be more to their liking. Norway also doesn't have a vote in Shengen related matters, if I recall, because EU members don't want Shengen freeloaders.

But Norway's situation is a result of their desiring European integration without formal EU membership, which is probably what would happen with the UK. Switzerland's situation is entirely different since they aren't party to really any of the European agreements, including the EEA. I don't think anybody in Europe wants the UK to be another Switzerland.

Norway stay outside of the EU to avoid the common fisheries agreement - it's the very large Norwegian Fishing Industry that is so strongly against Norwegian EU Membership and campaigned against it in both their referenda on joining the EU (the No side winning both times despite the governments of the time supporting joining).

"but i don't think it is valid to take a colonial example and expand it to modern nation-states"

Well modern states have fiat currencies and spend money by issuing said currency. They are as different as night from day from the kind of taxation via grain appropriation system that you refer to, because there isn't a limitation on the currency they can issue because the currency is not redeemable in gold or something like this. So governments that issue their own currency (which would exclude provincial governments or states like Greece in the EU) can spend as much as they wish to regardless of their tax revenues. The government doesn't actually get anything when it taxes or use up anything when it spends. It just spends money by "printing dollars" and taxes by "unprinting dollars". The only way government spending would be a problem is if the government printed/spent money in excess of what was needed to fully employ its resources. The result being inflation.

Maybe a better example is the boardgame Monopoly. The government is in effect the same as the "banker" in Monopoly. The banker hands out money to the players - i.e. issues currency. The government necessarily must always run a deficit. The deficit is equal to the money/property held by the players. If the banker had zero deficit there would be no game. There are taxation spaces on the board which simply remove an amount of money from circulation, much like taxation in the real world.

Council of Europe purpose is according to wikipedia to "promote human rights, democracy, and the rule of law" while it has both Russia and Turkey as members. Are you seriously saying that this organisation is good enough for UK? It seems that I have better thoughts about your country than you have @orathaic. Strange world, isn't it? :)

@Hellenic Riot. You are quite right on your Norwegian facts. The reason that both the Norwegian fishing and agricultural industry were against joining the EU, was that both those traditional industries had been spoiled by substantial subsidised from the Norwegian state fuelled by all the oil they are pumping up from the sea. (Basically the whole national are spoiled kids all of them :) If they were to join the EU the subsidies to both the agricultural and the fishing industry would have to be LOWERED to the EU level. The industry lobbying machine was against membership. Spoiled kids never grow up, do they?

I never thought I would do this but I actually both understood and agreed with "the man's" comments on the EEA. For once something that sounded sincere and genuine. I agreed with "I don't think anybody in Europe wants the UK to be another Switzerland."

@Hellenic Riot. Then following is a joke that Norwegians understand without explanation but I will give it to you.
Joke : Do you know the two reasons why Norway said NO to joining the EU?
1. The name European *Union*
2. The colours of the flag: *blue* and *yellow*.
Explanation :
The Norwegian nation is *very* young. In 1905 it broke up from the *Union* with Sweden that has a flag that is, you guessed it, *blue* and *yellow*. :D

Now Barack Obama is coming on visit to London. There is no secret where he an the USA stands on this matter. He wishes you to remain in the Union. At the same time it is no secret where Mr Vladimir Putin and Russia stands on this matter. Putin wants you to leave the EU. So my question to you is who do you prefer as your best friend USA or Russia? Obama or Putin?

Your best efforts to convince me to change my vote will not succeed, peterlund. I am voting to stay in the EU and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Top marks for trying, though :)