When getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, public officials tend to offer their good intentions as a defense. I don’t understand why we keep accepting such defenses. Who cares that your intention was to ensure proper tax planning? You still lied about whether or not you were domiciled somewhere else. I don’t see a valid argument that your so-called “good intentions” – an appeal to the ethics of your intentions, rather than the ethics of your actions – is relevant at all. It is certainly not a mitigating circumstance.
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