If more people worked, would income taxes go down?

Your dead right, tax evasion, avoidance or other financial jiggery pokery that helps big corporations keep their tax bill down is estimated to be in the region of £16 billion. Problem is, put pressure on this big guys to play the game and they sod off to another country and take the jobs with them.

What's wrong with tax avoidance? Perfectly legal.
 
What's wrong with tax avoidance? Perfectly legal.

Yes it's legal but when you have multi million pound businesses like, for example, Boots, paying around 2% corporation tax because they've moved offshore you have to ask is it right, when the average working man is getting rogered senseless.

Interestingly, Zug in Switzerland where they are now registered, has more companies registered there than the number of people who actually live there. Boots' answer to why they moved there 'Because it's a centre for business management excellence'

Well, it's certainly becoming that!

How 'British' companies dodge hundreds of millions in tax
 
Having said that, according to an official Treasury forecast, benefits will cost £170.9 billion in 2010/11. That is equal to what the Government will spend on the NHS, schools and universities combined. Income tax revenue from workers will only be around £150 billion - scary :eek:

I take it that definition of income tax excludes NI.
 
Yes it's legal but when you have multi million pound businesses like, for example, Boots, paying around 2% corporation tax because they've moved offshore you have to ask is it right, when the average working man is getting rogered senseless.
But, as they've moved offshore, there's no way you can start demanding tax from companies that (1) aren't based here and (2) aren't generating their money here. The majority of 'avoidance' using this arrangement is that their foreign income isn't taxed in the UK - so it's only really good for multinationals. Any profits generated in the UK are still taxed in the UK. Though transfer pricing might be stretched to the limit of believability to make sure that's as low as possible.

If you don't want to be 'rogered senseless', you can move yourself offshore. :p
 
Helps if a certain class of people didn't get away with tax evasion too that you seem to have missed off your list. ;)

When you have a welfare state that costs just short of £200 billion I think that is more of a pressing issue.

Are you sure you mean evasion as that is legal, avoidance on the other hand is just sensible.
 
It is a very complex argument and still an unproven hypothesis.

From an ideological standpoint, a higher rate of employment should generate greater tax receipts meaning that income tax should go down as higher rates are no longer necessary to meet government expenditure requirements.

However, there is also a reverse causality argument (by an economist called Kuznet IIRC) that says if income taxes are lowered, tax revenues will increase because people are more inclined to pay the lower rate. As a result, people will seek employment as it is more financially rewarding than welfare. The highest earners will also have less of a financial incentive to avoid their exposure to tax and simply pay their income tax to a greater degree than they previously would.

Again though, real world examples of either in practice tend to be largely circumstantial in proving either argument and ultimately the tax argument will always boil down to an ideological debate as fiscal policy is drafted by politicians rather than economists.
 
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