Moreover, the Revenue is secretive about its dealings. Of course, every taxpayer has the right toconfidentiality, but, equally, Parliament has to be able to satisfy itself that proper procedures are being followed. As a Parliamentary Committee observed in a recent report: "As it stands, the Department’s decision to withhold details from us reduces transparency and makes itimpossible for Parliament to hold Commissioners to account. This situation is entirelyunacceptable." The Committee has been particularly critical of the Revenue’s weak governance arrangements that have sometimes meant that the same officials first negotiated, and then they themselves approved, the settlements they had made.
The most notorious recent example concerned the American investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs. Owing to a "mistake", the firm paid £20m less tax than it should have done on bonuspayments. Likewise, Vodafone settled a long dispute with a payment of just over £1bn whereas, it was alleged, the true figure should have been perhaps four times higher. The chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, Margaret Hodge MP, said: "You are left feeling that the sort of deals that are made with big business are different – sweetheart deals in some instances – from the sort of way in which corner shops are treated, small business are treated or hard-working families are treated."
In fact, tax avoidance is a widespread middle-class activity. The heroine of the instinctive tax cheaters is surely Leona Helmsley, the American real estate entrepreneur who became known as the Queen of Mean. She was convicted of federal tax evasion and other crimes in 1989. The turning point in her trial came when a former housekeeper testified that she had heard Mrs Helmsley say: "We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes..."www.examw.com
Middle-class tax dodgers rely upon the oft-quoted legal opinion that "anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the Treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike, and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands."
To which my reply is that paying the tax that is due is a moral duty. If you don’t pay, the little people will have to pay more. Judging from what Mr Redknapp told the court during his lengthycross-examinations, he was on the side of the little people and not remotely interested in the weasel manoeuvres of the men in suits
一级建造师二级建造师二级建造师造价工程师土建职称公路检测工程师建筑八大员注册建筑师二级造价师监理工程师咨询工程师房地产估价师 城乡规划师结构工程师岩土工程师安全工程师设备监理师环境影响评价土地登记代理公路造价师公路监理师化工工程师暖通工程师给排水工程师计量工程师
执业药师执业医师卫生资格考试卫生高级职称执业护士初级护师主管护师住院医师临床执业医师临床助理医师中医执业医师中医助理医师中西医医师中西医助理口腔执业医师口腔助理医师公共卫生医师公卫助理医师实践技能内科主治医师外科主治医师中医内科主治儿科主治医师妇产科医师西药士/师中药士/师临床检验技师临床医学理论中医理论