ARTICLE · 22 AUGUST 2013

Confidentiality, Tax Avoidance And Evasion

The Sovereign Group

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Governments all around the world, including China, need to find more money and are under great pressure to collect more tax.

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Article by Howard Bilton July 2013, reproduced here in abridged version by kind permission of the Sovereign Group.

Dennis Healy, when he was the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, once said that "the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall." What he meant was that there is a fine line between illegal tax evasion, and legal tax avoidance. Put another way, if someone gets married and the unplanned consequence is that tax is saved that is lucky. If that person gets married and the main reason is to save tax, it is tax avoidance. If that person tells the tax authorities that they are married when they are not in order to save tax it is tax evasion.

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