Thursday, December 20, 2012

Is Santa an immoral tax avoider?

I am indebted to that satirical and very funny tax sage, Murphy Richards, of the Justice for Taxes Network for inspiring this festive blog post. He has noted the following in his tweets:
Being mythical puts Santa outside the scope of UK taxes. It may be legal but it is immoral and therefore it is illegal and Father Christmas is a tax evader. 
This lead others to comment:
@BrownsAccounts: Hodge #PAC questions Father Xmas re #tax #avoidance, deliberately creating losses by giving things away 

@jmalitrg Being Laplander and non-dom and spending so little time in UK chimneys he has no perm establishment so he is ok 

@jmalitrg:  A General Anti Abuse of Rudolf (GAAR) provision will catch him.....
Addendum

The front cover of Private Eye's Christmas edition follows a similar theme. Maybe it inspired Murphy Richards. It shows Santa flying across the sky in his sledge with the now ubiquitous ill-informed illogical commentators saying what they think:

Private Eye's message: 
"Happy Taxmas and a Dodgy New Year"
Critics:
Santa's based offshore 
He only spends a day a year in Britain...
...and he doesn't pay the Treasury a penny 
Booooo! We hate Santa

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