Tax avoiders are freedom fighters

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has sent a memo to the Cabinet Office, insisting that tax avoiders must be shunned for knighthoods and similar awards.

“Poor tax behaviour,” says the memo, “is not consistent with the award of an honour.” Media personality Libby Purves agrees: “Of course rich people who ingeniously avoid paying adequate tax should find that there is a penalty.”

Now I suspect that most conservatives disagree with both Miss Purves and HMRC emphatically and not necessarily respectfully.

One realises that these day words mean what the government says they mean. Thus our ruling spivs use the terms ‘tax evasion’ and ‘tax avoidance’ interchangeably.

Yet in actual, as opposed to our virtual, reality these terms are more nearly antonymous than synonymous. Tax avoidance is legal; tax evasion isn’t.

I hate to second-guess such august authorities as HMRC and Miss Purves, but I get the impression that they fall short of making that distinction.

‘Poor tax behaviour’? Tax avoidance is no poorer than looking for bargains in supermarkets. I’d call it sensible management of one’s finances, wouldn’t you?

If HMRC snoops consider some loopholes unfair, they should petition the Home Office to close them. If they don’t, they don’t consider them unfair, which means we’re free to use them. So what’s the beef then?

And how does Miss Purves define ‘adequate’ tax? To someone who, for old times’ sake, still insists on using words in their real meaning, adequate means sufficient.

Thus a person who pays a legally sufficient amount of tax is paying an adequate amount.

If Miss Purves’s burning conscience flames up at such casuistry, she should follow the example of Charles Lindberg, the famous pilot who always added 10 per cent to his tax bill because he was “proud to be an American”. (He was also proud to be a Nazi, but that’s by the bye.)

None of this transcends elementary logic and basic common sense, commodities that are rapidly becoming as rare as whale dung. But I’d like to expand the argument.

We’ve been conditioned to see nothing wrong about the state extorting more than half of what we earn by honest labour. This is seen as the state’s God-given right.

It’s nothing of the sort, and never was during the entire history of Britain, bar wartime and the last century or so.

When income tax (of a staggering 10 per cent for those earning more than £200 a year) was first introduced in Britain in 1799, it was widely opposed as an unacceptable governmental intrusion into citizens’ private affairs and a threat to personal liberty.

That’s exactly what it was – and is. This isn’t, however, an argument against taxation in general. Some intrusion into citizens’ private affairs and even some curbs on personal liberty are necessary for the state to fulfil its primary function: keeping citizens safe.

Hence there can be no valid argument, this side of the libertarians’ and anarchists’ good offices, against a level of taxation that’s consistent with that desideratum – and perhaps a little extra for other essential governmental needs.

Such is the theory. In practice, however, the British (or any other Western) government doesn’t use taxation for such useful purposes. Citizens’ safety is the least of their concern, as witnessed by our justice system.

Since 1950 violent crime rates have gone up 100-fold, making Britain one of the most violent European countries. In his book Licence to Kill, David Fraser cites stacks of data placing the blame for this outrage squarely on Whitehall.

The whole justice system we buy with our taxes favours the criminal over the victim. Most crimes go either uninvestigated or unpunished. And when some punishment is meted out, it’s typically derisory, putting violent recidivists back on the streets within months and leading to appalling reoffending rates.

The government doesn’t do any better protecting us from external threats. The defence budget is now lower than the cost of servicing the national debt, leaving Britain defenceless – or suicidally relying on her outdated nuclear arsenal.

The state is thus in default of its principal function. And yet it still insists on its moral right to extort half of our income or more.

Moreover, it’s the state that’s guilty of ‘poor tax behaviour’. Our national debt is rapidly moving towards two trillion pounds, with the government continuing to spend more than it extorts. In fact HMG sees it as a huge achievement when in some years it overspends by less than in most others.

In short, there’s no useful purpose for exorbitant taxation. There is, however, a pernicious one: increasing the state’s power over the individual by making people more dependent on the state. This is out-and-out tyranny.

One tell-tale sign is the state’s unquenchable thirst for looting our pension funds. The more financially independent older people are, and our population is aging, the less power does the state have over them.

Private pensions are thus the state’s terrifying bugbear. That’s why both Labour and Tory governments launch devastating raids on them. In fact, our – Conservative! – Chancellor Hammond has just announced another one.

All things considered, every pound the state collects in taxes is a bullet for the gun of tyranny. Conversely, every pound remaining in the individual’s wallet is armour against that bullet.

That’s why finding legal ways to diminish our tyrannical tax burden isn’t just our right, but our civic duty. Hence I’d propose a measure opposite to one favoured by HMRC and Miss Purves.

No candidate should be considered for honours, especially knighthood and peerage, unless he can prove that he has exhausted every legal possibility of paying less tax. People who strike a blow for liberty must be rewarded – even if they do so for selfish reasons.