Towards the Promised Land

A parliamentary report confirms what Private Eye, the Guardian and UK Uncut supporters have long known to be true: that voluntary taxpaying isn't confined to Greece and Italy. Over here, the more you owe, the less you pay.

What's really shocking about the latest report is the simplicity of this particular scam. In Shaxson's Treasure Islands, the vast panoply of tax-evasion scams is laid bare: companies acquiring 'debts' to other companies in the same group but based offshore so that all the profits magically become losses, or every banana in the world being virtually shipped to one tiny tax-free island, and myriad other schemes.

But that's too complicated. Vodafone and Goldman Sachs found a much better system.
1. Refuse to pay your tax.
2. Make it very clear that you have more and better lawyers than the government.
3. Wine and dine officers of the Revenue and Customs service ('Don't cheat: eat'). They will soon be your friends. And eventually your employees.
4. Accept the head of HMRC's illegal offer of a tiny settlement with a handshake. (Vodafone owed £6bn and paid £1.25 bn). Don't worry about oversight: Dave Hartnett both shakes hands and is the authorising officer, very conveniently. And when that pesky parliament pokes its nose in, HMRC will insist on 'commercial confidentiality'.

Why break the law when you can own the government, whichever party's nominally in charge?

A new hero for the Pantheon

I just read a fascinating interview with Eva Joly: French fraud prosecutor, Green politician and French presidential candidate.

She has some very trenchant things to say about civilisation, taxation and the UK's government. I wonder if we can arrange some kind of transfer over here.

We have been living in a kind of collective illusion that this is how the world is — that the poor shall always be poor, ordinary people shall be squeezed to the benefit of a kind of oligarchy."

…of the UK's non-dom tax arrangements for the super-rich ("This is a serious hole in European tax co-operation").

Plans to save money by merging the SFO and other agencies into a new economic crime agency concern Joly. "I think it's a scandal. What sort of society are we creating? All over the world, the powerful don't want economic crime investigation."

Some of her most swingeing analysis is reserved for the Britain's failure to tame the forces in the Square Mile. "Your political and business elites are asking for sacrifice, asking to close down public services – you are cutting the number of public sector jobs by 400,000. Why don't your politicians have the courage to recover taxes in order to be able to pay for the schools, the teachers, the hospitals? To me, tax is civilization. It is the basis of your social contract."

The decision by the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, to delay implementing the Bribery Act, passed in the dying days of the Labour government, enrages Joly. "We have been waiting for that how long? 20 years?"

Ireland bankrupted: capitalism wins

The Irish government's budget has been announced: cuts in public services, cuts in pensions, cuts in welfare benefits, the income tax threshold brought down to €15,000, cuts in the minimum wage (because obviously the poor caused the recession).

There is good news though: corporation tax is staying at 12.5% (as opposed to the 25%+ current in every other European and Western nation).

So that's alright. Corporations can continue to channel their disgraceful tax evasion funds through Ireland while beggaring that country and their countries of origin. Their reckless behaviour bankrupted Ireland and the rest of the global economy, and yet they're still being treated like favoured guests. A tax rise to 15%-20% would still be lower than most other countries and attract corporations, while making a huge difference to Ireland's economy.

Is anyone else bothered by this? Making the poor suffer to bail out banks and the rich?