Let me make my position clear from the outset, because it is quite an extreme one.
I would rather give my accountant £2,000 in order to save £1,000 in tax than hand that £1,000 to the Government.
Yes, I know. That makes absolutely no financial sense. That is rather the point.
I have reached the stage where my resentment at handing money to the British state has become greater than my desire to keep it myself. I wasn’t always like this. In fact, I grew up in a decidedly Left-wing household in a relatively poor part of North London. My father was an accountant and my mother was a teacher. She became a teacher at a time when Ken Livingstone, Labour councils and Left-wing politics were very much the prevailing culture in London.
Government wasn’t something I hated. Quite the opposite. The bargain seemed perfectly reasonable to me. You worked, paid your taxes, obeyed the law and contributed to society, and in return the state provided decent public services and a safety net for people who genuinely needed it. That was the deal. I believed in it. I don’t anymore.
Then they came for the pension
The final straw for me is pensions. From April 6th 2027, most unused pension funds and pension death benefits will be brought into a person’s estate for Inheritance Tax purposes. This isn’t speculation. It isn’t something Rachel Reeves might do at some unspecified point in the future. The change was announced in the 2024 Budget and has subsequently been legislated for....<<<Read More>>>....
