Taxation: Avoidance

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I am a little at a loss to understand why the noble Lord is questioning why we are putting extra money into HMRC to recover this enormous sum of £7 billion annually by the end of the spending review period when that was not done by the previous Government.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, is it not the case that the real dividing line is not between evasion and avoidance? Evasion is criminal but, as far as avoidance is concerned, nomenclature should be devised to make it absolutely clear that there are two categories. There is that category where decent ordinary citizens so adjust their affairs that they properly are free from tax that would otherwise be charged. The other category is redolent with mind-boggling artifices that are nothing but a sham. Will the Minister give an undertaking to consider nomenclature that will draw a clear distinction between those two categories?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I appreciate the difficulty, which is why I attempted earlier to distinguish between the two cases around what appears to have been the intention of Parliament when it drafted the tax laws concerned.