Tax Evasion

There's a world of difference between a small tradesman pocketing the odd cash-in-hand job to keep the wolf from the door and a millionaire siphoning profits through a labyrinth of offshore accounts, yet both are technically 'evading tax'. Only one of them, however, gets chased down with the full force of the law, while the other gets invited to political fundraisers - just ask the likes of Rishi Sunak's donor circle, or look at the countless loopholes baked into the tax code under successive Tory governments, all while HMRC ramps up audits on the self-employed.

The small tradesman - plumber, carpenter, market stallholder - operates in a world where tax feels less like a civic duty and more like a punishment. The cost of compliance is high, the paperwork endless, and the government’s so-called 'support' is a bureaucratic swamp that only seems to work for those with a dedicated accountant. Faced with rising costs, late-paying clients, and a tax bill that could mean the difference between feeding the family and defaulting on the van lease, it’s no wonder some turn to cash jobs and a bit of creative accounting. According to a 2022 Federation of Small Businesses report, nearly 50% of self-employed workers experience late payments, with many citing cash flow struggles as a key reason for resorting to informal income streams. Unethical? Maybe. Understandable? Absolutely.

Now, contrast that with the millionaire tax evader. Not someone who just dodges the rules, but someone who writes them - funding politicians, lobbying for loopholes, ensuring the very laws that ordinary people are expected to obey work entirely in their favour. These are the people with armies of lawyers and accountants, setting up shell companies in the Cayman Islands and booking their profits in Dublin while actually raking it in from British workers. They don’t evade tax to survive. They do it because they can - and because no one stops them.

And here’s the real sting - while the small tradesman risks being clobbered by HMRC, the millionaire tax avoider is seen as a 'savvy businessman'. They turn up at Davos to pontificate about 'wealth creation', all while siphoning money away from the very societies that enabled their success. They use the roads, rely on a healthy workforce, enjoy stable markets protected by publicly funded institutions - but heaven forbid they actually contribute to any of it.

Both evade tax, but let’s not pretend the moral weight is the same. The small tradesman is often demonised as a cheat, yet public sympathy tends to be on their side - they’re seen as people just trying to get by. Meanwhile, the millionaire tax dodger is often framed as 'financially astute', lauded for 'playing the game' rather than called out for gaming the system. This double standard allows the wealthy to keep bending the rules while the self-employed and working-class are hounded for pennies. The system wrings every penny from the small tradesman while letting the tax-dodging elite off the hook. One is a symptom of a broken system; the other is the reason it’s broken. And if HMRC really wants to crack down on tax evasion, it should start at the top, not with the bloke fixing your boiler - unless, of course, the real aim is to protect the powerful.