Would you still pay tax if you could get away with not paying it?

[Uneasyy]

NC for this.

My lovely friend is currently making thousands a week in a cash-in-hand job.

She’s happy, genuinely happy and living her best life. However she dropped into conversation the other day that she got no grants/furlough or anything over lockdown as she’s never put anything through the system.

I didn’t really know how to feel. On one hand it’s none of my business whatsoever, on the other - This situation has made me scared for our economy and future prospects and it’s made me feel uneasy about her as a person.

She said she’d lose thousands through tax and it would be pretty impossible for her to get caught.

So I wonder, if were 100% sure you wouldn’t get caught, would you still choose to pay tax?

AIBU to think that I still would?

Depends on how i was financially. If I was struggling and was getting a good amount in cash in hand then probably not as a short term thing. In the long term I know it can impact on pensions etc if you're not claiming help and not paying in tax.

If I was earning £1K plus a week then I would definitely be putting some of that away for a rainy day to compensate for lack of NI/tax going into the system.

Would I report someone? - if they were my friend then no. But I would be questioning if they thought their decisions were wise.

Tax avoidance no thank you. Morally wrong and I would be tempted to report

Tax avoidance is legal and something most SE people do routinely every year.

Dh is self employed and minimising his tax liability is something that we plan for throughout the tax year, legally. We’d be fools not to.

Mate of DH never paid a penny in tax, lived as a non person with his GF for 20+ years. Never got caught by HMIT but was scammed by a financial advisor who took his life savings (mainly the tax he never paid). Karma...

And btw @Iamthewombat shame on you for that "uber alles" comment! We have come along way in Germany in terms of racial and religious discrimination/inequality and for you to bring it up because of a petty tax discussion is despicable to say the least.

Oh get over it, you drama queen. You lost the argument. Be gracious about it.

Boring post alert but, as a couple of PPs have mentioned, if your friend isn’t paying national insurance contributions then she may not be eligible for a full state pension when she retires. She has to contribute for a certain number of years to be eligible and a higher number to receive the full amount.

My MIL was very put out that she only gets a portion of the state pension, but she worked cash in hand in a nursery for 8 or so years in the 90s and paid no NI conts for that period.

@Iamthewombat haha what argument? The one that ended with you arguing against yourself and referring to Steffi Graff? Please don't flatter yourself.

@bluejelly

I would pay more tax if I could. I feel it's my moral duty to society and I can afford it.

You know you can already do that if you chose to do, don't you?

I'm employed, so pay what's owed. I certainly would not happily pay more, I pay a shit load already. If I could reduce the amount I could pay, I would.

They will catch up with your friend and when they do, they'll be like a dog with a bone.

If I really could get away with it with no repercussions I wouldn’t pay no tax but I might pay less. Ultimately if we were all a bit more honest would we not keep more of our money for Ourselves and our families rather than pay it to the government to use for services.

I do pay into my pension which means I avoid tax. I also want to save for my retirement but I would do this in other ways if a pension didn’t have such tax benefits (ie it boosts my savings). A lot of us have pensions and isas so I question the honesty of the pp who claim they would always pay all the tax they can and wish they could pay more.

Yes. I reported a family member who boasted about not declaring his jobs, people have a moral responsibility to pay the tax they are required to.

@Iamthewombat - shame on you for your bullying. I reported your post for racism which is surely is. It’s one thing having a debate, quite another to gleefully make personal attacks on another poster.

A frenemy had a fall out with me about 10 years ago over my allegedly burgeoning eBay side business (was just getting rid of old stuff and buying, using then reselling items not selling new stock). At the time my employed job was making redundancies so I wanted to sell stuff to have a clear out and.some savings to fall back on.I was getting decent prices for.things. She seemed to resent this (she also sold on ebay). She may have possibly tried to ding my sellers rating and then shopped me to HMRC for trading as a business and not declaring my income. . I received a letter from HMRC stating this, they obviously didn't disclose who but it was most likely to be her. They had checked all aspects of my finances, noticed that I had made gift aided charity donations, had sold over 50% of.My eBay items to benefit various charities. I think she may have given them the eBay account she knew about but didn't know about the other one. I had registered as a business and did self assessment tax anyway as a higher rate taxpayer. It turned out that I had somehow overpaid tax for several years and got a £9K rebate! I really enjoyed letting her know that HMRC has contacted me, her face was a picture when she found out about the overpayment. I believe she was investigated by HMRC herself shortly after. No smoke without fire and all that?!

@Brot64 The UK has a noncontributory tax/benefits system and pretty much all of what we did have was removed by the Conservatives, the last one was SERPS and i completely agree with you on this unfairness.
However, this isn't the question asked by the OP nor is the discussion about "avoidance" its about evasion...

fwiw i have paid 40% income tax for the majority of my working life, i would get NI based JSA for 6 months @ £73 per week.... wow!

If we all evaded tax (and no chance of being caught) it would result in the collapse of society, not getting a higher rate of UC/JSA would be the least of our problems.

shame on you for your bullying. I reported your post for racism which is surely is. It’s one thing having a debate, quite another to gleefully make personal attacks on another poster.

Maybe check the definitions of ‘bullying’ and ‘racism’? There are some good online dictionaries.

Conclusively winning an argument using logic and evidence is not ‘bullying’. Batting away frivolous allegations from the loser of the argument is not ‘bullying’. Quoting a section of the German national anthem is not racism. Light heartedly using that quote to expose a gaping hole in somebody’s argument is not racism, and nor is it a personal attack.

This is a public forum. People can air their views and should expect to be challenged on them, as Brot64 has been. Any poster putting forward flawed arguments based on misunderstandings and (in my opinion) rooted in selfishness should expect to be called out on them. That is the essence of debate.

I notice that you yourself are no fan of paying tax though, so maybe that’s what it is really about. You know that your arguments against paying tax (which are ‘I want to keep more for myself and my family rather than giving it to the government to pay for services’) would fail, so in you go with the cheap “shame on you” digs. It’s tragic. It’s the equivalent of an overexcited teenager trying to no-platform a speaker at their sixth form prize giving.

@jasjas1973 got it. Thanks. Wasn't referring to evasion but rather avoidance but thanks for the correction. Re: the JSA this is what I don't understand with the system. Despite how much anyone pays the assistance when needed is the bare minimal.

@CayrolBaaaskin ignore @Iamthewombat, having had a look at some of her comments on other threads, this seems to be her MO. Had I known prior to this message ping pong, I wouldn't have engaged with her at all. And whatever she says it is racists! Everyone knows that the "uber alles", no longer exists in the German national anthem and for a very good reason. So again she's talking a load of rubbish.

I used to own a cash in hand business, all logged through the HMRC portal and taxes paid correctly. I used an online invoice system so no matter how I got paid, it was recorded.

So yes, even if I could avoid it, I would still pay it.

@Iamthewombat Sorry didn't word that properly.
I meant dividends (not bonus.)
I'm not hiding any bonus payments .

I still would. I'm not a dick. This would be a deal breaker for me and I would have to tell her what I thought. I would also report her. This cannot be excused as someone who is on the bread line doing it to get by even - she is earning thousands a week. Of course she would lose a lot in tax. If you earn a lot you'll pay alot. Unless she never uses anything tax pays for (and I'm assuming she does leave her home and use road etc even if private schools, medical etc) she is entirely unreasonable and selfish

I don't know the ins and outs of HMRC but surely everyone has a national insurance number and therefore if you are not employed and you don't have a self assessment submitted every year then they will ask the question of how the fuck you support yourself?

Obviously they can look at if you live with a partner or have generous parents. I am not sure how high up on the list of priorities it would be.

I think your friend is an idiot, because if they catch up to her then their reach is great.

Your friend is probably going to get screwed - there's a big difference between a couple of hundred quid a month from a side gig or whatever that can easily fly under the radar, & thousands a week as an only source of income, which you're visibly living your 'best life' off of with Instagram holiday pics to illustrate etc...

Underestimate HMRC at your peril.

As to the question; I wouldn't be comfortable paying o tax, but I would certainly be comfortable paying a lot less - probably roughly in proportion with how much of current society I don't feel part of/don't care about.

I don't know the ins and outs of HMRC but surely everyone has a national insurance number and therefore if you are not employed and you don't have a self assessment submitted every year then they will ask the question of how the fuck you support yourself?

HMRC absolutely do not have the resources to do this.

I would. I'm a socialist, and not a hypocrite, so I put my (tax) money where my mouth is.

I ended a friendship because the erstwhile friend, while professing the leftiest of principles, does all sorts of things to minimise the tax paid by her business, including putting all sorts of personal spending through the business, and couldn't see how her actions were totally out of kilter with her professed principles. And her business is tax consultancy.

My SIL and her DH are massive tax dodgers too. They buy properties, do them up/extend them and sell them on. They made £550k on their last project, and £650k on the one before that. They "live" in them for a few weeks when they're almost finished so that they count as their primary residence and therefore not liable for capital gains tax. And the person who does their accounts and advises them is my ex-friend tax consultant. We think they may have had a bit of a warning about "disguised remuneration" though, as they've just built a newbuild and sold it without living in it, we think.

What makes it worse is they're always moaning about the state of the roads, the 9 month wait for a knee op, how dreadful the kids' schools are etc. Needless to say, I have to point out how, if more people paid their taxes, there'd be more money for these things.

That's small beer compared to the tax avoidance carried out by big corporations and the super-rich though. I think the whole tax code needs to be re-written so that instead of the Inland Revenue having to prove that a certain money is taxable, all money is taxable unless it falls into an exempt category, and have the rules really tightly written. The trust laws really need rewriting, and they should only be exempt if the money generated is used for a genuinely charitable purpose that has benefits that go far beyond the land, property, and assets of the trust itself.

If we could get away with it I wouldn't pay a single penny in taxes. Only because we have private medical insurance, we educate our children privately, we employ over 500 people, paid stamp duty on our property and pay an extortionate amount in council tax, we are paying high taxes as it is

Yeah, but you'd still call the police or an ambulance if you needed to, and benefit from the enforcement of things like consumer protection, environmental and safety legislation, and you don't have to step over the bodies of the poor when you step out of your limo, or give scrofulous beggars the swerve when you go our to flash your cash.

Tax monies are used to create a civilised society and everyone benefits from that.

those on higher rates have nothing aside from from their savings and investments to fall back on when things get rough

As soon as those savings and investments fall to below £16k, they can get means tested benefits, less a small deduction (£40pw on £15,999) and when they're down to their last £6k, they get the full entitlement. And even if they live in a mega-million pound house, the value of that doesn't count, nor does money in a pension fund.

Of course, it would require something of a lifestyle adjustment to get by on £94 a week (more if you have kids, a non-working partner or are ill/disabled), but if it's enough for the rest of us it should be enough for the formerly rich, too.