Tax dodging builder?

sanaxe1 said:
Maybe legally but not morally. You can't have people on one hand complaining that you should report the tradesmen due to there not being enough tax to pay for services but then on the other hand give huge corporations a pass just because they can afford the top lawyers and accountants to find loop holes. At the end of the day it comes down to are they paying their fair share of tax for the amount of money they made based in what everyone else is paying.
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There's a massive difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The fact you try to morally compare the two is laughable.
 
Pudney said:
There's a massive difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The fact you try to morally compare the two is laughable.
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Go on then, Enlighten me. What is this massive difference? Because to me it seems more like a fine line.
 
sanaxe1 said:
Go on then, Enlighten me. What is this massive difference? As to me it seems more like a fine line.
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It's not complicated. At it's most basic tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is not.

Paying into your pension is tax avoidance, as is a company spending profits. Not declaring income is tax evasion.

Some tax avoidance schemes and loopholes are incredibly complex and morally unjustifiable, but they're still legal and it's HMRC's job to determine that and close loopholes if necessary.
 
Russinating said:
It's not complicated. At it's most basic tax avoidance is legal, tax evasion is not.

Paying into your pension is tax avoidance, as is a company spending profits. Not declaring income is tax evasion.

Some tax avoidance schemes and loopholes are incredibly complex and morally unjustifiable, but they're still legal and it's HMRC's job to determine that and close loopholes if necessary.
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I am not asking him or you to explain the difference between evasion and avoidance in a legal matter. His comment was that comparing the 2 MORALLY is laughable. I was asking him to show me the massive difference in the morality of the two. Now when im talking about tax avoidance i am talking about the type of avoidance these huge multinational companies use to avoid paying billions in tax such as a double irish with a dutch sandwich for example. Sure legally its fine but im talking about the morality of the matter because something being legal doesn't mean its morally acceptable to do and vice versa.
 
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Psycho Sonny said:
they aren't using any loopholes though.

this is the problem people who have no clue about tax saying they are abusing the system. when they aren't.

amazon doesn't make any money. they sell stuff for minimal profits and others for losses. it all evens out. their goal is to keep increasing their customer base whilst breaking even until they are the only place you can buy stuff.

so when you have a company who doesn't care about making profits then they can take advantage of that to pay no tax as they haven't made any money to pay tax on.

this why people have suggested companies with turnovers of over £500 million a year which are internet only should be subject to a tax on turnover rather than profit. which is why amazon are now starting to build physical stores to sell stuff in. so now they wouldn't need to pay that tax if it was introduced. as they would have physical stores.

but you keep on spreading fake news. it's also the number one line used by people when questions around paying tax arise. well if amazon isn't paying any why should i? because legally they don't need to as they didn't make any money.
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Please stop spreading fake news, Amazon as a whole made around $10Billion profit in 2018. Amazon UK is actually only a branch of AMAZON EU based in Luxembourg. Take a guess on why they are based in Luxembourg, i'll give you a clue its not to increase their customer base!
 
You can protest with your purse. If you don't like them, don't use them, and lobby government to make unprecendented changes to the tax system re: tax is paid where the product or service is sold. Most of HMRC's income from London's fintech and banking sector would disappear overnight, though.

The current corporate tax rates in Luxembourg are as follows:

Businesses with taxable income below €25,000 – 15%
€25,000 – €30,000 – €3,750 + 33% of the tax base above €25,000
€30,000+ – 18%

Businesses must also pay a 7% solidarity tax on the amount they owe. This takes the corporate tax rate for companies in the highest band to 19.26%.
On top of this, communes across Luxembourg income their own municipal business tax. In Luxembourg City, this is charged at 6.75% – meaning the overall combined corporate tax rate there is 26.01%.
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Not that different, if not more than UK rates depending on the commune and income. The reason they pay less tax has nothing to do whatsoever with Luxembourg's tax rate, and this is already being clamped down on: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/04/amazon-eu-tax-irish-government-apple

But this kind of 'sweet deal' is everywhere because it encourages companies to call your city home, generate jobs and stimulate the economy. A lot of small businesses don't pay business rates for example (https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/small-business-rate-relief). Is that morally wrong?

The answer, solution or moral boundary isn't as clear as people make out unless you're on your high horse about big companies generally being evil, down with the man etc.
 
sanaxe1 said:
Go on then, Enlighten me. What is this massive difference? Because to me it seems more like a fine line.
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There is a clear bright line between fraud (tax evasion) and tax avoidance. Let's be clear, one of these is criminal with the intent to defraud society of taxes, the other is civil. For example:

https://www.accountancydaily.co/restaurant-owner-jailed-ps1m-tax-fraud

https://www.accountancydaily.co/trainee-accountant-sentenced-ps30k-vat-fraud

https://www.accountancydaily.co/businessman-sentenced-ps180k-tax-fraud

Tax avoidance, whether effective or not, will not see you go to prison. It may have moral issues, and that's debatable considering a lot of the nonsense that the public consider "bad" from large companies, but that has a lot to do with the complexities of UK tax legislation. Don't even get me started on the public's perception of Transfer Pricing, particularly after seeing the effort some companies go to in order to create a fair assessment and still get labelled as bad.

Before you even start down the line that somehow being a criminal is ok if you're small, SMEs contribute to over half of the UK's private sector turnover:

https://www.fsb.org.uk/media-centre/small-business-statistics

SMEs are a significant part of our country, and excusing their criminal behaviour or attempting to place it in the same category as Amazon's "avoidance" is utter nonsense.

Edit: and to be even clearer, evasion involves the knowing intent to deceive society out of taxes legally due. Avoidance involves the use of legislation, whether poorly drafted or not, in a way to achieve a minimisation of tax. The key moral difference is that avoidance aims to use the legislation to legitimately (even if the intent is misplaced) to reduce tax.
 
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99% of trades are dodgy.

Just like the body shop I used last year. Rocked up and was quoted a price, booked car in for week later. Turned up on the agreed date to get work done and confirmed price again. Went back to collect car, whipped out debit card to pay and was suddenly told "oh er we'll have to add VAT if you're paying by card (£60)". I was like eh? Needless to say I went off to find a cash machine and vowed not to use that body shop again.
 
Paying into a pension is tax avoidance, as is donating to charity, or a company investings profits in R&D or expansion of manufacturing etc.
 
LeeUK said:
99% of trades are dodgy.

Just like the body shop I used last year. Rocked up and was quoted a price, booked car in for week later. Turned up on the agreed date to get work done and confirmed price again. Went back to collect car, whipped out debit card to pay and was suddenly told "oh er we'll have to add VAT if you're paying by card (£60)". I was like eh? Needless to say I went off to find a cash machine and vowed not to use that body shop again.
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It's pretty common, even your small newsagents where you pay cash for things, same principle applies.
 
LeeUK said:
99% of trades are dodgy.

Just like the body shop I used last year. Rocked up and was quoted a price, booked car in for week later. Turned up on the agreed date to get work done and confirmed price again. Went back to collect car, whipped out debit card to pay and was suddenly told "oh er we'll have to add VAT if you're paying by card (£60)". I was like eh? Needless to say I went off to find a cash machine and vowed not to use that body shop again.
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So you are a hypocrite too. :p

Despite knowing exactly what the situation was, you were happy to cooperate in a conspiracy to evade paying VAT because it suited you to save a bit of money. and now you are grumbling about the traders dishonesty.

You could just as easily have paid by card and stumped up the VAT that YOU owed.

As I said earlier. Who, exactly, is evading the Tax here. The trader or the customer?

;)
 
LeeUK said:
99% of trades are dodgy.

Just like the body shop I used last year. Rocked up and was quoted a price, booked car in for week later. Turned up on the agreed date to get work done and confirmed price again. Went back to collect car, whipped out debit card to pay and was suddenly told "oh er we'll have to add VAT if you're paying by card (£60)". I was like eh? Needless to say I went off to find a cash machine and vowed not to use that body shop again.
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Get a written (emailed) quote next time and hold them to it. To ensure a level playing field ask for quotes inclusive of tax. If I am quoted for a service, I ensure that it includes VAT and I get a VAT receipt (Window cleaners and milkmen could be an exception if I actually used either but I hope not).
 
Orionaut said:
So you are a hypocrite too. :p

Despite knowing exactly what the situation was, you were happy to cooperate in a conspiracy to evade paying VAT because it suited you to save a bit of money. and now you are grumbling about the traders dishonesty.

You could just as easily have paid by card and stumped up the VAT that YOU owed.

As I said earlier. Who, exactly, is evading the Tax here. The trader or the customer?

;)
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The trader. The customer is entitled to pay the price he is quoted, via any means. How can you not understand that?

"oh the poor traders, they have to quote non-VAT prices that they implicitly state as including VAT as otherwise they'll lose business".

That's horse****.

If in the example the price had been quoted at the outset as not inclusive of VAT then that's one thing, but prices, if they don't explicitly say excl. VAT, can reasonably be expected by a customer to be inclusive of any VAT due.

Say the price is quoted at £400. You are trying to say that by agreeing a price of £400 for cash, the customer is getting let off paying £80 of VAT on top of that. When in reality, if the trader doesn't explicitly state that £400 is exclusive of VAT, the customer is expecting that the price is £333 without VAT, and there is £67 of VAT included in that.

So when the payment of £400 is made cash in hand off the books, the trader ends up paying zero VAT, and keeping that £67 for himself. Tax evasion.​
 
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Orionaut said:
So you are a hypocrite too. :p

Despite knowing exactly what the situation was, you were happy to cooperate in a conspiracy to evade paying VAT because it suited you to save a bit of money. and now you are grumbling about the traders dishonesty.

You could just as easily have paid by card and stumped up the VAT that YOU owed.

As I said earlier. Who, exactly, is evading the Tax here. The trader or the customer?

;)
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I was quoted a price for the job which did/should have included all costs including VAT. It wasn't as if I was told that it would be £xx for cash nor did I ask for a cash discount.

I'm no hypocrite as I paid for the job what I was quoted for the job. They still give me a company headed invoice bearing their company number and VAT number so as far as I am concerned I still paid VAT whether their copy went through the shredder or they were just too thick to realise what they had done.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the type of people who do these sort of VAT tricks are the same type who share Tommy Robinson rubbish and Brexit crap and "moar money for the armed forces" on Facebook. So patriotic to their beloved country yet still stick their fingers up at paying their tax.
 
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