Quote of the day 8th April 2016

I quoted this yesterday, but in view of the ridiculous fuss about a perfectly legal unit trust set up by the late Ian Cameron, in which his son David Cameron sold all his interests before becoming Prime Minister (and paid all due tax on the earnings concerned), it is worth reminding us about what a wise Judge said nearly a hundred years ago about responsibility to pay tax as today's quote of the day.


"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"

(Lord Clyde, judgment delivered in 1929)

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