&gt; Fortunately (if a bit paradoxically), in the UK, for taxes, following the letter but not the spirit of the law is against the law.<p>Or, in other words, you can&#x27;t actually follow what the law says, you have to anticipate what the government would prefer to be paid and pay that, or you might get prosecuted.  That doesn&#x27;t seem &quot;fortunate&quot; to me at all.  How can anyone reasonably follow the law if the government can&#x27;t even manage to write it down?<p>Personally, I&#x27;d favor the idea of a tax code that fits on a single page of normal-sized text, but everyone wants the myriad exceptions they&#x27;ve bought and paid for.  And now it&#x27;s not even sufficient to understand and follow the tax code as written?  If people take advantage of &quot;loopholes&quot; written into the law, and the government doesn&#x27;t like that, then they should <i>fix their tax code to say what they mean</i>.