Tax avoidance is legal. It exists because the rules on tax are complex, and riddled with exceptions, allowances, special cases, "except see paragraph 17.1(b)" and similar, and even credits for specific situations. For anybody whose financial position is even slightly complicated, the process of working out how much tax to pay can easily involve "tax avoidance". You've got enough income to invest regularly in something like an ISA? You're engaging in "tax avoidance" if you do so. But you're also taking advantage in a way that government intends that you should. By saving for yourself, you're potentially reducing the burden on the state.
The issue, obviously, is where the rules are stretched beyond anything they could possibly have meant. But even in those cases, the perpetrators - the global companies paying minimal tax, for example - are obeying the rules as they are set out in acres of small print. To "crack down" on tax avoidance is like cracking down on eating, when what you mean is that you're against over-eating. Really cracking down on tax avoidance could be achieved more effectively by cutting out swathes of verbiage from the rules, than by demonising companies and individuals who are doing what the rules allow them to do.
The issue, obviously, is where the rules are stretched beyond anything they could possibly have meant. But even in those cases, the perpetrators - the global companies paying minimal tax, for example - are obeying the rules as they are set out in acres of small print. To "crack down" on tax avoidance is like cracking down on eating, when what you mean is that you're against over-eating. Really cracking down on tax avoidance could be achieved more effectively by cutting out swathes of verbiage from the rules, than by demonising companies and individuals who are doing what the rules allow them to do.
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