UK taxpayers deserve a Bill of Rights and they need it now, says Dave Chaplin.
Friends, colleagues and fellow tax advisors – we all share the goal of ensuring fairness under tax law. To guarantee citizens pay what the regulations demand, and not a penny more. Our work is vital for an orderly society.
Yet how often have we seen, case after case, the absence of basic rights and lack of oversight, allowing the machinery of government to run roughshod over its citizens? When the vagaries of an impossibly complex tax code allow room for alternate interpretation?
We’ve seen ordinary taxpayers denied basic justice, with people hounded by a tax authority that abandons reason whilst operating as judge, jury and executioner – answerable to none but themselves. Our clients become powerless before a tax authority that’s run out of control.
Too often justice is denied. The scales of justice are weighted heavily against ordinary citizens, as an unrestrained tax authority tramples over basic rights. The state can reach deep into personal lives, upend careers, and demand sums that exceed the bounds of reason. Hard-working taxpayers made victims, with no avenue for grievance, without mortgaging one’s home to afford justice.
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