Star comment: Tax dodgers are slippery customers
Suddenly tax avoidance has become the political bandwagon of the day and no politician worth his or her salt wants to be left off this one.
While millions of families are feeling the pinch in the current recession and some of the poorest are being hit in their benefits, it stinks to discover huge corporate concerns are collectively ducking and dodging to ensure that they cling on to billions which could otherwise be going into the public purse.
They can do this because they have armies of clever accountants who can spot loopholes at 20 paces and once spotted, they drive a coach and horses through them and continue to do so until somebody in the Treasury belatedly catches up. As one loophole closes, it is time to seek another one, and the game begins again.
Nobody wants to pay more tax than they need to, and that applies as much to individuals as to international businesses.
However, it is reasonable to expect those international companies who are making a killing by providing goods and services to taxpaying British people should in turn pay a fair whack in the form of British taxes, rather than squirrelling away their loot overseas and out of the reach of the British tax collectors.
The way to get round the problem of tax avoidance is to simplify the tax system. The more complicated it is, the easier it is for the accountants to find the hidden nugget among the thousands of pages of rules and regulations which allows them to exploit a tax get-out clause, save those they are serving lots of money in tax, and get handsomely paid themselves in return for their achievements.
Experience has also shown that tax is less likely to be avoided when the tax is perceived as fair and reasonable. Trying to crack down on those who legally avoid tax is a bit like squeezing a bar of soap, and having a complicated system merely aids these slippery customers.
