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That's bollocks! It's exactly what my parents said when I mentioned why people were angry with bloody Top Shop.

And not everyone who is rich (or has an above average income, which is probably more useful to talk about seeing as the term rich is bandied around too much) puts money in offshore accounts FFS.

Ok, I was over generalising, and being a bit flippant.

I really liked Velocio's post as it's rare that people aren't hypocrits. And I think if you read my posts, you'd have seen that as well as peoples hypocrisy I was highlighting the lack of clarity people exercise when talking about 'tax avoidance'.

From what I see, what most people actually mean when they complain about 'people dodging tax', is that *they *don't like people (co's and individuals), not paying as much tax as they personally believe that person should morally pay.

...which may be all well and good, but how on earth do you translate that into a fair and fully functional legal framework that you can apply across the board.

Yes obviously, not everyone uses offshore trusts, but most people will use an ISA. OK you can say, "yes but that's less only going to be less than £10k on money you make from that investment, and even then you've probably already paid tax on getting your money there!"...

...but it's *still *tax avoidance!

The difference is that it is tax avoidance that is encouraged by the government and that is at a low enough level that people think it is ok. The same as Hippy's point about builders getting paid cash in hand here and there.

On the other hand, there are probably a lot of people out there who would think that having ~£10k of spare money to invest means you've got plenty of money, and should therefore be paying tax on any of those earnings, rather than dodging it.