Strikes

The top 1% might (and notice the qualifier, might) be able to use tax allowances, reliefs and avoidance schemes to reduce their contributions significantly. However, that doesn't mean they're paying less tax than lower earners – merely at a lower overall rate. If, for example, a billionaire were able to reduce their tax contribution to 10% of their earnings, they would still be paying vastly more than a millionaire contributing at 45%.

Being registered in Luxembourg is not a tax dodge (though Luxembourg is certainly a tax haven, despite its high tax rates). The Single Market means exactly that: companies can have a head office in any EU state and pay tax there whilst doing business everywhere. Using Cayman, Bermuda, etc., is somewhat different, though in the vast majority of cases entirely legal. The Guardian, for example, despite constantly preaching about tax avoidance, uses offshore schemes to reduce its headline profits and minimise its British tax contribution.

As for "punitive": it's subjective. To one person, any tax rate over 50% might be considered punitive. To another, the rich would be getting off lightly with a marginal rate of 75%. But your final point is spot on: that's the Laffer Curve in action. You can increase taxes on people to the point where they resent paying them, and then their economic behaviour changes and they end up contributing less (or even nothing).

Now that is a very good question. I've often wondered that myself.

I don't know any billionaires, but I do have a close friend who had a close friend who was (very nearly) one. He was, by all accounts, the most miserable man on earth: dinner parties at his house consisted of the cheapest supermarket food (as he hated to spend money), he had no particular hobbies, he was deeply religious (which made him live in a state of constant guilt about everything), and he was obsessed with getting revenge on people who had wronged him in the past. Another friend, who also knew him, compared him to Mr Burns in The Simpsons.

In contrast, I have quite a few millionaire friends, and they have a great time: eating in good restaurants, drinking fine champagne like water, criss-crossing the world and indulging their hobbies to the full.

I suspect there is actually a sweet spot with wealth, beyond which happiness starts to decrease. I have witnessed the lifestyles those people lead: they never get any time alone as their properties are so large they need a constant retinue of servants to maintain them. A friend of mine who is a multi-multi-millionaire and has a lovely house with its own private railway told me her one desire is to shut the door and be alone, which she can never do.

But this isn't about making moral judgements or about the lifestyles we'd like to lead. It's about tax policy and the level at which we feel it is fair to tax other people.

It is a dodge, it may be legal but taxes should be paid on profits in the country they are earned, avoiding doing so is entirely a "dodge" (dodge doesn't require an element of illegality) and of course The Guardian does the same, just because it's market niche is aiming itself at faux socialists, doesn't mean that their multi million pound corporate ownership shares the beliefs it espoused in print.
  As for your final sentence, you seem to be implying that if people "resent" paying what the Government expects them to pay they may resort to illegal behaviour (I assume that's what you mean be "economic behaviour changes") and evade taxes, this has been a go to argument by the Tories for years to get out of paying more tax and is still as ridiculous as it ever was. If loopholes were closed then they wouldn't be able to break the bloody law in the first place.

If you define 'career' as kissing your greedy **** boss's a*** for the sake of a promotion 

Paying tax in one EU country and doing business everywhere is not a dodge – it's fully tax compliant, as that is precisely how the Single Market was designed to work. In contrast, some offshore tax structures could be described as a dodge, although they're perfectly legal too.

My final sentence referred back to your previous comment, and resorting to tax evasion is far from the most likely way people will react to taxes being hiked. There are plenty of more common changes in economic behaviour – not taking on overtime or additional projects, going part-time, not starting up or investing in businesses, or, for those in a position to do so, relocating to a different tax jurisdiction.

As for your final sentence, this doesn't make sense. Closing tax loopholes does not prevent people from breaking the law. It makes them more likely to break the law as it renders tax structures that were previously legal illegal.

Can't remember exactly but know Private Eye has printed stories about their careful use of tax laws to avoid paying their fair share, so hardly blameless.

As do owners of every paper, such as The Sun and Mail who rant about the EU and the ECHR and use these organisations at every chance they get to gain money. Please to dot try and make out that The Guardian and it's readers have the Monopoly on hypocrisy and "doublethink", and there's far more of the buggers too.