Is it tax avoidence or tax evasion

An accountants job is to prepare your accounts, to give you tax advice to minimize your tax liability and then to calculate how much you owe in tax in a timely manner so that you keep up to date with your responsibilities in relation to tax. The process of minimizing your tax liability is done by intelligently applying tax avoidance measure (it could also  be called efficient tax planning.  However the process of illegally avoiding tax is called tax evasion

(1) Tax avoidance: this involves  availing of reliefs and allowance within the tax code to minimize how much you pay in tax and will involve one or more of the following
      (A) Structuring transactions correctly. So structuring a transaction in such a way that it avails of a relief.
      (b) Time management of transactions. So timing a transaction either bringing it forward or delaying it so that it comes with in a certain time frame in order to avail of reliefs
      (c) Arbitage. making sure transactions are in the correct structure or switched between different structures to avail of reliefs i.e. between company and personal, and between income tax and capital gains tax etc

(2) Tax Evasion is where you deliberately under declare your income to the tax authorities in order to avoid paying tax . So you earn 80000 in a year but you only declare 30000. This can result in fines and penalties and possibly imprisonment.

Therefore in tax avoidance your declare all of your income but in such a way that you pay the least amount of tax possible while staying within the law. This is compared to just simply not declaring your income correctly. The first one takes planning and is an intelligent way to run your business. The second one will just lead you to paying more tax than you should have paid and possibly jail. Remember the Revenue Commissioners deal with millions of people and have come across most if not all the crazy schemes that you may think up that you believe are original.