Political News
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2025
3:29 · 458K views · Apr 2, 2016
A short clip of comedian David Mitchell on The Last Leg discussing tax avoidance versus tax evasion and why taxes matter.
Cited as a witty, clear take on the avoidance versus evasion distinction.
3 comments from Hacker News
"If you want more taxes and are rich, just donate to treasury argument" again. We want systemic changes, not patrons. Taxes are for equity and fairness. Taxes are compulsory, donations are voluntary. Taxes are payment for being for being rich. Donations are taxes for being a good person. Great rant: David Mitchell on Tax Avoidance from The Last Leg this video Then Mitchell being more serious: You can't blame the rich for paying as little tax as possible. I do the same [LINK]
I don't know if this video will display for everyone as someone tagged it as private though I can see it not being logged in. I think David Mitchell has the best take on tax avoidance vs evasion . [1] [1] - this video [video][3 mins] David Mitchell on Tax Avoidance from The Last Leg
But that's not how legal systems works. If you're caught running a red light, you can't argue that "many other people are doing it, too". Similarly, if a dozen cars run a red light at the same time, and only you are stopped, the best you can do is argue discrimination; you still broke the law, and you're still culpable, and it's the police's prerogative to catch whomever they can. That's also not how legal precedent works. Legal precedents in the US are derived from court decisions, not whether something is occurring en masse. I'm not even sure why precedents work, given that there's no "case" here. Your misplaced cynicism about moral outrage becomes more obvious if you replace tax evasion with something much worse, e.g. child labour or human trafficking, something which is in fact prevalent, though probably not within Apple's sphere. But the moral outrage exists because these papers expose something so blatantly immoral that people are genuinely surprised and dismayed at the sheer scale at which rich companies and people are stockpiling money in secret. We know human trafficking occurs every day, all over the world; if someone uncovers a big network of, say, politicans involved in this trafficking, aren't we right to be outraged? Is it a "failure to see the world for what it is" just because it's accepted that evil things happen? How blasé can one get? Re "don't you think they are entitled to try to save as much of it as they can?", this confuses morality with legality. As D