Everybody does it

Britain is talking about Ken Livingstone, a Labour party politician, who is being called a tax dodger because he unapologetically channels "his earnings through a company – paying 20 per cent corporation tax instead of up to 59 per cent income tax and National Insurance" on some $750,000 over the past several years.  Livingstone responds that this is "something that 'everybody else who has a small business' did, and to suggest otherwise was a 'smear campaign.'"  But he's in a bit of a difficult spot because:

"These rich bastards just don't get it," Livingstone wrote in 2009. "No one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in our parliament, unless they are paying their full share of tax."

No representation without taxation!

Tax activist Richard Murphy posts some financials and has a go at articulating the structural features of the tax system that cerate this scenario and some fixes.