Creative accounting which follows the law to the letter. They're not doing anything illegal (you'd imagine at least - I doubt it would be an easy task to decipher exactly what they're doing to determine legality) but certainly immoral.
> They're not doing anything illegal (you'd imagine at least - I doubt it would be an easy task to decipher exactly what they're doing to determine legality)
Fortunately (if a bit paradoxically), in the UK, for taxes, following the letter but not the spirit of the law is against the law.
> Fortunately (if a bit paradoxically), in the UK, for taxes, following the letter but not the spirit of the law is against the law.
Or, in other words, you can't actually follow what the law says, you have to anticipate what the government would prefer to be paid and pay that, or you might get prosecuted. That doesn't seem "fortunate" to me at all. How can anyone reasonably follow the law if the government can't even manage to write it down?
Personally, I'd favor the idea of a tax code that fits on a single page of normal-sized text, but everyone wants the myriad exceptions they've bought and paid for. And now it's not even sufficient to understand and follow the tax code as written? If people take advantage of "loopholes" written into the law, and the government doesn't like that, then they should fix their tax code to say what they mean.
You: I'm doing a. Law doesn't say I can't. Just a, not A.
I don't see an issue with a fine. "Creative accounting" is a nice title for "finding loopholes." Loopholes, by their very nature, are UNINTENTIONAL gaps in the law.
Politicans draft the law. Tax firms merely collect on it. So you're asking politicians to foresee all possible loopholes. You might as well as a programmer to write bug-free software, except the programmer doesn't have any say or get to ask any questions about the implementation.
> Loopholes, by their very nature, are UNINTENTIONAL gaps in the law.
Cynical me says "Unintentional? I don't think so.."
I have read that in the UK it has been fairly common for people to work for the HMRC for a couple of years on secondment from large tax companies. They help make the laws, and then they go away and help the tax avoiders.
> in other words, you can't actually follow what the law says, you have to anticipate what the government would prefer to be paid and pay that, or you might get prosecuted.
I don't think that's a fair or accurate summary of the provision.
Follow the link and read the statue text - don't assume my glib one-liner told you everything you need to know about it.
