I see (Report, 13 February) that Lord Fink, the Tory party’s former treasurer, admitted he had taken “vanilla” steps to reduce his tax bill and claimed that “everyone” was involved in tax avoidance. If we have enough money, should the vast majority of working people like me who have always paid our full tax bill consider suing him for slander?
Barbara MacArthur
Cardiff
• If HMRC and the CPS employed more staff than they at present do, might they not be able to bring in more unpaid tax and bring more suspect tax evaders to justice, making the cost of the extra staff worthwhile? If HMRC spent £1m more on qualified staff, it might find that it netted £10m in unpaid taxes (the words “sprat” and “mackerel” come to mind in this context), and if the CPS did the same it would be able to take more suspects to court and raise the number of convictions. Alison Saunders, its head, would then be able to borrow from Voltaire and say that, in this country, we send a tax cheat to prison from time to time, pour encourager les autres.
Francis Jones
London
• Is it not time we treated tax evaders in the same way as benefit claimants and applied a range of sanctions for non-compliance? Eg the removal of access to any tax-supported service or government agencies for anyone evading more than, say, £100,000. So no access to the NHS, no school places for their children, no right to a government-issued driving licence, no registration of road tax, and hence no access to motor insurance, no right to a government-issued passport, visa or naturalisation, no right to register land and property with the Land Registry, no right to register (and run) a company via Companies House, no access to any government grant or apprenticeship schemes, no right to run for any elected office or sit in the House of Lords. I’m sure other readers can think of more. Plus a range of services that could be denied to international corporations similarly evading their taxes.
David England
Formby, Merseyside
