Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

It has, but at one time tax was 90%.

Governments in more recent years have believed that taxing the rich less brings in more overall revenue overall, so have lowered it. Despite this, they are still participating in eleborate schemes that aren't in the spirit of the law to pay even less. Raw greed IMO.

They could do the right & moral thing and pay up whilst still enjoying a lavish lifestyle, but instead they would rather have even more for themselves at the expense of public services and the most vulnerable in society.

You're right in that some lower income people do the things you describe, but there's a world of difference between someone on a modest income carrying out petty evasion/avoidance and what these people are doing.

In days gone by the rich have got richer and taken an ever increasing portion of the cake, whilst the average person has been happy with a enough crumbs to buy an average house & car, raise a family and go on holiday for two weeks a year.

The trouble is that the rich now want to even keep some of the crumbs for themselves too which is causing allsorts of problems and anomalies as awareness & resentment increases.