Tax avoidance is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage, to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. The term tax mitigation is not however a synonym for tax avoidance. Its original use was by tax advisors as an alternative to the pejorative term tax avoidance. The term has also been used in the tax regulations of some jurisdictions to distinguish tax avoidance foreseen by the legislators from tax avoidance which exploits loopholes in the law. The United States Supreme Court has stated that "The legal right of an individual to decrease the amount of what would otherwise be his taxes or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted."

Tax evasion, on the other hand, is the general term for efforts by individuals, corporations, trusts and other entities to evade taxes by illegal means. Both tax avoidance and evasion can be viewed as forms of tax noncompliance, as they describe a range of activities that are unfavorable to a state's tax system.

Toby Young, FRSA is a British journalist and the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his stint in New York as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine. Young served as a regular judge in seasons five and six of the Emmy Award-winning television show Top Chef and is the co-founder of the West London Free School.

Young was born in Buckinghamshire and brought up in Highgate, North London, and South Devon. His mother was the BBC Radio producer, artist and writer Sasha Moorsom and his father was Michael Young, the Labour life peer and pioneering sociologist who coined the word "meritocracy".

Young was educated at Creighton School (now Fortismere School), Muswell Hill; King Edward VI Community College, Totnes; and William Ellis School, Highgate. After failing most of his O-levels, he got two Bs and a C at A-level and managed to get in to Oxford after Brasenose College sent him an acceptance letter by mistake. He got a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and, after a six-month period as a News Trainee at The Times, went to Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar, where he worked as a teaching fellow in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This was followed by a two-year stint at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he worked as a teaching assistant in the Social and Political Sciences Faculty and carried out research for a doctorate which he didn't complete. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Buckingham.