Adam Afriyie is the Member of Parliament for Windsor.
The tax practices of international corporations have brought the debate on tax avoidance and wealth creation sharply into focus. Yet the moral outrage directed at Amazon and others may well be misplaced. If our tax laws are not being broken, then any blame for a failure to collect what is "felt" to be a proper proportion of tax lies firmly at the door of governments and politicians.
Tax evasion is a crime which must be rooted out, but the avoidance of unnecessary taxes is a moral duty for individuals, families and company executives who must serve their shareholders. The current UK tax regime is doing exactly what it has been “designed” to do. The problem lies in the lack of any coherent design.
The answer to the tax avoidance dilemma lies in building a sane tax system which recognises that wealth creation is an economic, social and moral good. The goal must be to allow the least advantaged in society to have the chance to get on in life by creating a stream of new jobs in a dynamic and competitive market. And to create jobs, we must unashamedly back British enterprise. Removing barriers to prosperity is a sound, age-old Conservative ideal, and it must be at the heart of the current economic strategy.
Thomas Hobbes wrote that “riches are gotten with industry”, and if we are to allow industry to flourish, we must heed the argument that it is the role of government to create an environment in which citizens are free to function as they see fit as wealth-creating individuals.
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