Salute the rich who choose to pay their taxes

Paying tax — which many of us have been doing this week before HMRC’s 31 January deadline — is a citizen’s duty, not an act of virtue. But for the very rich it is also a choice, since with the help of expensive advisers they can duck it or pay very little of it by using complex avoidance devices and offshore havens. So if they stay onshore and pay up, we should salute their good citizenship — if only to encourage others like them who might lighten the tax burden for the rest of us.

In that context I was pleased to see two of this column’s controversial heroes of modern capitalism in the Sunday Times list of the UK’s 50 highest taxpayers. The Coates family of Stoke-on-Trent, who have reaped a £5 billion fortune by converting their betting shop chain into the online gaming giant bet m365, take second place on the list, behind low-profile sportswear tycoon Stephen Rubin; you might recall my remark that the tax on the Coateses’ wages of gambling sin must be paying for most of their local NHS provision.