About that far

KEY POINTS

• Respondents to survey distinguished between evasion and avoidance.
• Wealthy criticised more for tax avoidance than others.
• Tax evasion prevented by accountants and advisers.

Last summer we published a set of scenarios about tax avoidance and evasion; then we asked our readers their clients and anyone else who was interested to say what they would do in those situations. The idea was to test how far people would go to reduce their tax bill: what did they consider to be acceptable tax mitigation?

We had over 600 responses which we have summarised. They show that despite the attempt to blur the distinction our respondents saw a clear difference between avoidance and evasion.

However a sizeable proportion were prepared to countenance some fairly “low level” evasion and there...