Tax Avoidance

All types of people try to avoid paying tax or to pay less tax, but the public judges them differently.

• The British public assume around one third of taxpayers have exploited a tax loophole.
• Just under half (48%) thought tax avoidance was "usually or always wrong".
• But more than 60% believe it is "usually or always wrong" for poorer people to use legal loopholes to obtain more benefits.

So people are far more concerned by the idea of low-income groups exploiting the system than about high-income groups doing the same. This discrepancy is reflected in government priorities - speedy changes to welfare legislation and little done to address widespread tax avoidance by the wealthy.

Why? People are bad at dealing with numbers in the millions and billions. Simply listing the vast sums of money going offshore that could be spent on public services in the UK means little emotionally to people.

We need to link the numbers to their consequences.

• The money lost because someone does not pay tax on their private jet means thousands more visits to food banks.
• Fewer people might have killed themselves after a work-capability assessment if big companies had not registered their offices in offshore tax havens, and the pressure to reduce benefits payments was not so intense.

Source: Robert de Vries and Aaron Reeves: Why do people care more about benefit 'scroungers' than billions lost to the rich? in The Guardian, 15 Nov. 2017