When complex tax legislation becomes unbelievable

Key points

• Explaining complex legislation to non-tax experts results in incredulity.
• Journalists’ misunderstandings of tax legislation is the result of absurd tax complexity.
• Some media outlets prefer to fit the stories they publish around their pre-determined narrative – irrespectively of accuracy.
• The media is slowly realising that some ‘tax avoiders’ are victims of increasingly uncertain and complex tax legislation.

When Taxation asked me to write 800 words explaining why the mainstream media occasionally struggle to report accurately on tax matters my initial thought was: ‘Well it’s because tax is complex and explaining complex things is complex. Hmmm or is there more to this I could write in another 788 words?’

It is pretty ironic when a professional journalist’s skill (I don’t claim to be one) is to focus on the impact to engage the reader and boil down an 800-word argument into a single sentence....