I am confused by your 23 March report in which Danny Alexander is quoted as saying ‘tax evasion is a crime like any other… now it will be the same for those that help tax evaders’. Wasn’t it always? Aiding and abetting? Conspiracy?
And then your report notes: ‘He called on… regulators [to take steps] around enabling and promoting avoidance’. Avoidance, as we all know, is not a crime. Is it to become one?
Incidentally, I am continually surprised by the current discussions about anti-avoidance. I thought all these schemes whose only purpose was to avoid tax were knocked on the head by Ramsey many years ago?
AJ Cotton, London SW14
