Our unwritten constitution seeks to maintain a delicate balance between the need of government to collect taxes efficiently and the rights of taxpayers. We can argue over precisely where that balance should be struck but in recent months the debates over how best to address the issue of tax avoidance have left a sense of unease about the health of some of the principles on which that balance depends.
The first point that caught my eye was some of the statements made in the proceedings before the Public Accounts Committee in December last year. As part of his evidence Jim Harra director general business tax at HMRC said this of the proposed GAAR:
‘It will also create an additional level of uncertainty for the promoters and users of...
