Quite the best story about tax ever

A quite delightful little story about tax and taxation. You might recall that a while back an IT contractor stole the list of banks account owners from a Swiss bank. And then sold it to the German government who used it to chase those naughty tax avoiders for the money they had avoided/evaded.

We might call this a victory for law and order or we might call this part of it such a victory. For the Swiss have now jailed the man for three years because what he did was indeed theft.

But the part that makes this such a wonderful story is this:

The 54-year-old German-born man appearing before the Swiss criminal court in a striped polo shirt and jeans, said that he had intended to use the bulk of a 1.1 million euro ($1.47 million) reward to pay off taxes he owed in Germany.

At which point I think we can all agree that tax rates in Germany are much too high. For look what happens: people are driven to theft just to be able to pay those taxes.

Update: I'm told by a trustde source that the reason he owes the tax is because he was on the list that he himself handed over. Which is really icing on it, isn't it?