over 15 times as much money is lost through tax avoidance at the top than is lost to benefit fraud at the bottom?

Well over 15 times, because the scale of benefit fraud is constantly overplayed:the failure to distinguish between fraud by claimants and errors made by the DWP means that the true level of fraud may be lower than it appears from their statistics.
The breakdown of the figures shows that £540m of Income Support and Jobseeker’s Allowance was overpaid owing to fraud or error, 4.9% of the total budget. A further £720m (4.6%) was also overpaid in housing benefit. That’s not fraud, but administrative screw-up. Not the same thing.
Also under-reported in the Govt’s press releases are the £1.1bn that should have been paid in benefits but was not handed over. The underpayment covered people who were not paid as much as they were entitled to and did not include people who were entitled to benefits and failed to apply, or those whose benefits were incorrectly rejected.
Sorry, but the picture’s even worse than the above piece holds out.
Compare the resources, punishments and vilification of everyone on benefits because a few make dodgy claims on a relatively small scale, with the adulation, gongs, and blind-eye turning for the corporate shysters.

Did you know that over 15 times as much money is lost through tax avoidance at the top than is lost to benefit fraud at the bottom? That’s £15BN of public money lost to a powerful elite who can afford to pay tax advisers: so this is an urgent call to sign up to our Tax Justice Rally!

Err, it’s not ‘public money’ at all. You seem to be working under the unarticulated and undefended (and, I think, undefendable) premise that all money really belongs to the state. Saying that £15bn is ‘lost’ to tax avoidance every year implicitly assumes that the government is entitled to that money – and that is manifestly not the case, either morally or legally.

You only have to look at the recent behaviour of shamed ex-city banker ‘Fred the Shred’ or the startling statistic that the wealthiest 1% own 21% of the nation’s wealth to realise who the real cheats in today’s society are.

I do look at the behaviour of Fred the Shred, and you know what – it does make me realize who the real cheats in today’s society are. They’re the governmental officials who feel that they have the right to confiscate the fruits of peoples’ labour and give it to bankers who, if there was any justice in the world, would be on the dole. It’s pretty funny that the best example you can come up with is a guy who is reviled precisely because his £700 grand pension is being extorted from taxpayers against their will – and yet you think this is a case for putting more private money into the state’s hands.

Finally, it’s not ‘the nation’s wealth’ that this top 1% own, it’s their own. If you have a specific problem regarding how some particular person has made his money, feel free to argue the merits of the case – but it’s simply rubbish to conclude that just because someone has a lot of money, they must be a cheat.

Can we actually have the counter-figures that show how much of that £15bn would actually be gained if the law was tightened? And indeed how much would be lost to those that do then move in the financial sense?

Honest question, without an honest answer this debate is one sided and worthless.

Yet again the Liberal Conspiracy makes me wonder if it has been infiltrated by Guardian wielding Old Labour voters.

People who look at the law and pay their taxes as the law allows them to are not stealing, or denying other people their income.

After all, you cannot steal what is yours in the first place.

If you want to complain, then aim your bile at the government which creates the laws that allow a person to pay X instead of Y amount in tax.

Is there anyone in the UK who sits down at the end of the year and thinks they didn’t pay enough tax and promptly writes out a cheque to HM Treasury to boost their tax payment?

If you think rich people should pay more tax, then say so – but don’t keep repeating the lie that they are somehow “stealing” from the rest of us when they don’t.

I no more steal from you than you steal from me when paying less tax.

What is meant by tax avoidance?

If I decide to give up smoking because it is so expensive, am I guilty of tax avoidance?

And if not, why not?

Fuck tax havens.

end of.

We need simpler tax rules. Complexity , means the very wealthy can pay for accountants to minimise the tax bill.Brown has increased the complexity making extra work and money for accountants. Part of the problem is in Briton, large amounts of money are paid to accountants who do no benefit this country. Too often companies end up being run by accountants who have no experience of supplying what the customer wants and ensuring sufficient money is spent on R and D to keep the company competitive. In the USA there are too many lawyers, in the UK we have too many accountants.

In the UK we have a tax system which benefits the very wealthy and a welfare system which often disadvantages the poor who wish to work; everyone between the two extremes loses out.

It has indeed been a good few decades for accountants.

Things are not what they seem. The tax system is broken and has been for a long time. It needs euthanasia.

People have been deceived into thinking they pay Income Tax. The burden really falls on employers. For every £1 of actual post-tax purchasing power an employee receives, the employer has a gross cost of around £1.90. This gives the UK and indeed most of the EU the seemingly impossible – the low pay, high labour cost economy.

The tax system is the ultimate job-destroyer. Some jobs like bus conducting have simply vanished. Hospital wards are left filthy. Care homes are understaffed. The streets are not swept. Companies replace their telephonists with call routers to drive their customers mad. Or the work is exported to low labour cost countries. Scottish prawns are sent to Thailand for peeling and then flown back again. It is the economics of the madhouse and economic suicide.

If governments persist in trying to tax moveables, then they will lose revenue.The answer is to tax that which is fixed ie land.