In praise of tax avoidance...

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It's my money for heaven's sake. All of it. It doesn't belong to you. It isn't there for you to spend it on co-ordinating things or for pretending that you care (when really you care only about your pay cheque just like I do).

There's a case for tax - not a good one but a case. But that case is made worse by the waving of bloody shrouds at people who, quite rightly, morally and properly, seek to make sure they keep as much of the money they earn to spend themselves.

In the end I avoid taxes - just like millions of others - for some important reasons:

1. The government demands too much of what I earn - mostly for no good reason

2. The government is very bad (or too good depending on one's perspective) at spending money

3. In its urge to scam every last farthing the government makes tax ever more complicated and therefore avoidable

4. Avoiding tax reduces the power of that government to stop me from living my life in freedom

Tax avoidance keeps government honest. I've no idea how that government raised up a frothing mob to chase down all the tax avoiders but, if we do one honest and moral thing in our lives, we should face down that mob and keep on avoiding paying taxes. If a tax can be avoided it's your duty to do just that, to weaken the power of government, to give the rise to pathetic baby "anarchists" who want to burn down shops to make them pay more tax, and to make the biggest, loudest raspberry in the general direction of the great waste that is government.

Every time I hear another news report of some business or celebrity caught in the headlights of the mob as "tax avoiders" I want to cheer them, to cry out in their defence and to celebrate their sense at avoiding paying taxes to the uselessness of government.

It seems to me that tax avoidance is a moral duty.

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