Aggressive tax avoidance, on the other hand, is when someone complies with the letter of the law but aims to “ subvert its purpose”.

But this is not some crazed figure on the extreme left hoping to bring down the establishment. The book is written by an accountant who has spent his career coming up with the very tax avoidance schemes the super wealthy use to evade the clutches of HMRC. One of the hardest hits in the book stems from our rebel’s experience of a tax fixer in Australia who used transfer pricing for Papua New Guinean timber. He writes: You’ve chosen TAXOPIA LITE, a self-lodgment service. Please be aware that tax offices are starting to phase-out DIY paper lodgments and are encouraging the transition to digital.Taxtopia’s anonymous author has done the impossible – created a hilarious and deeply troubling expose about how the world’s shady tax system is exploited and proves what we always suspected – that our tax system is rigged against us. Read it and weep.’– Geraint Anderson author of City Boy Perhaps one of the best people to ask about this calls himself the Rebel Accountant. A chartered tax adviser based in London, he has anonymously written a new book, Taxtopia, which explains precisely how the UK’s system is “rigged” in favour of the wealthiest and reveals the methods – sometimes simple, sometimes clever, often outrageous – they can use to take advantage. Even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted a new Economic Crime Bill which will supposedly require full disclosure of property ownership, there are (the usual) loopholes. Excludes year-end adjustment entries to match your bookkeeping figures to the financial statements for all record-keeping software other than Xero.

Ah yes, those devious accountants. They usually manage to slip away without any of us learning their names, even if all the celebrities blame them.But discussion of an important tax conundrum for the humble self-employed at home – whether to be a sole trader or a company – was a tad brief. I wanted him to note that tax and dividend rate changes can affect the equation, and that companies are more useful to traders with spouses.

Sometimes the author tries to be too funny. Perhaps worried the reader will switch as soon as things get a bit tax-heavy, there are often unnecessary anecdotes about his own life. Taxtopia also works a little too hard to ram home how unfair the UK tax system is, when it could sometimes have let the policies speak for themselves. Praise for TAXTOPIA: How I Discovered the Injustices, Scams and Guilty Secrets of the Tax Evasion Game I’d always accepted that the tax system in big western democracies was stupidly over-complicated, and that the law allowed people to weave through those laws to arrive at their most beneficial outcome….But depriving one of the world’s poorest countries of tax revenues using bogus transfer prices while stripping their forests bare seemed a step too far.” The companies – and individuals – choosing how much tax they pay But nothing happened – “Ernst & Young’s profits went up and Lewis was knighted by the Queen”. That’s because when HM Treasury investigated the Isle of Man leasing company, it found no evidence of VAT fraud as it had If you have ever paid an accountant, they have charged you what they think they can get away with, not what the work is worth. Always complain about your fee.”Big-name and big-money disputes like this have provoked schadenfreude-fuelled headlines for years, often involving far more complicated disputes over alleged “dodges”. Often it’s HMRC that wins. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind.