Tax evasion

There is, as many people are aware, a vast difference between evading and avoiding but what is this difference?

Trying to get it straight in my own mind I found the following:

The government announced a Consultation Paper in April 2004. This was the start of a new régime for “tackling tax avoidance” by requiring disclosure of “schemes” (DOTAS) which the government felt resulted in companies and individuals paying less than their fair share of tax.
The régime itself was revised from the 1 August 2006 to help distinguish between “tax avoidance” (legal but irritating to the government) and “acceptable planning” (legal and actively promoted by government).

This was from a commercial organisation helping companies to ensure that compliance with the law did not mean paying too much money. Evasion is something else again – deliberately not paying tax to which the government is entitled.

What triggered this off in my mind was looking at the table of contents for the Public Finance Review Volume 39 Issue 1 (January 2011) which is special issue on the topic of evasion. My next visit to the British Library will be Thursday of next week so I will look at the whole issue and pick out what I think will be of interest to readers.

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