The World We Live In

Quite... Wait 'till some of the donors to Cameron-saviour-of-the-old-order get bubbled. This Tory lot (forget the Lib-Dem's) are so stupid that they can't even keep a f......g lid on their own tiffin tin. What twats. The saddest thing of all is the shiteness of the opposition.

It's unbelievable.

Benefit cheats and tax dodgers; that'd be Baroness Warssi then.

You know what they say about following our betters...

Opposition? We're the opposition, mate.

Now... which one's Dave and which one's Ed again? There's barely a milliband between 'em...

Gary Barlow, voted Celebrity Dad of The Year 2012, is a guaranteed toss-pot.
Now he's being shown as a tax-dodging Shylock, it's only a matter of time before the affairs come out a la John Terry, a past Celebrity Dad of the year at the time he was banging hid mate's girlfriend (and a whole load more tarts) behind his wife's back and spending his wedge at the bookies, oh, and greasing seedy lawyers' palms defending his okey-cokey Dad.
I was watching QT last night and they were all talking about income tax and how people should pay it.
Well, how about the taxman takes the 45% off the rich every month as it does the 20% from the office clerk and bus-driver?
Is that so mind-bogglingly difficult a concept to embrace?
Yes, because they are all at it, and paying next to nothing.
Did you see Ken Clarke's face?
And Ruth Lea; well, denial is a powerful thing.
Just tax the bastards!
What's the point in saying 45% when they pay less than the average cleaner?
I hope this runs and runs.
The govt have realised they need the rich to pay their way now but do they have the bottle to carry it out?

If you're an ordinary Joe or Josephine in a PAYE job, you can't get around it. If you're self-employed, you can try but will probably get caught out. If you're rich, on the other hand, you can employ the right people to help you dodge it legally. It's a great system. Of course, though... it's the sick people on benefits and the unemployed who are the real culprits! Yes... let's go after them in the tax-dodger-owned media.

I think O.B.E. stands for Offshore Banking Enjoyer.

I can't profess to be very politcally minded, and perhaps am a little naive to the world and the way it 'works', but seeing Jimmy Carr scapegoated for this tax dodging thing makes my skin want to turn inside out. Could the media pick a more arbitrary figure in the whole fucked-into-a-tin-pot country as the face of tax-dodging?

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the smirk wiped off Gary Barlow's smug, royal-ladder-climbing face, but I'd rather see a banker hung out to dry, you know, those men and women paying £10 in tax out of every million earned? The ones with the driveways so long that the bin lorry needs an extra tank of diesel to go and collect the fallout from last night's caviar and sex-torture party?

At least Carr made his money making people laugh.

That's an excellent point, Steve. I don't have any special grievance with Jimmy Carr, either... and it's not as if he's trying to hide it. He's apologised, too, and not tried to justify it on the grounds of 'wealth creation', 'job creation', 'perfectly legal', etc...

So why do they drag him to the pillories? Could it be that he doesn't own vast swathes of the news media, and isn't a political donor (at least to the governing parties), and probably isn't chums with the 'right' people? In other words, he's a softer, less potentially damaging target all around. What's a comedian when sized up against Uncle Rupert?

Uncle Rupert is untouchable I suppose, and not long for this world, hopefully. His scum-sucking sons will carry on his legend no doubt, with a select group of idiots as the front line defence for when something unethical happens and they need a head for the chopping block.

Mmm, so an occasionally contraversial comedian, it's making more sense to me now - I wonder if Jimmy was subject to a vetting process, after all, if they were going to construct the downfall of a (kind of)loved public figure in order to sell papers (again), they needed to select someone with a high level of fame, but a fairly narrow fan demographic (he always strikes me as the darling of students) so they could secure the hatred of the most amount of people possible, with the least amount of resistance, and acquire their shiny 50p pieces.

Conspiracy theories aside, I would also like an island, like you say, a bed, food, water, and isolation, bang on. Although I might bring my iPod - VAT free through a business - fuck you Cameron.

It's funny... I honestly only started this thread out of exasperation that this episode was somehow seen as big news in our celebrity-obsessed info-tainment age. It was a cry of 'Get me out of here!!'

But the issue has given me a lot of pause for thought. At risk of being accused of having contradictory principles, I can't help thinking.... 'Would I have done the same in their position?'

I've always been a low income earner, firmly in the low-rate PAYE bracket, never really able to benefit from any tax perks. And I've always been happy to pay my taxes - even if I've not always been happy about how they've been spent. I like to think I'm paying something towards a common welfare provision that I myself have drawn on. I think (naively, perhaps) that it's an essential part of a civilised society. Not quite 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs', but working along the right lines.

But supposing... supposing I was in the other bracket. Supposing I had an income that placed me in, say, the top 1% of earners. I'm sure I'd still have more than enough to live an extremely comfortable life even if I was paying the top rate of tax. I wouldn't need any extra, really.

But then my tax accountant comes to me one day and says 'Listen... I know you're happy about paying these taxes. But there's this tiny little thing here, which if you do it, you'll be able to keep an extra 4% of your income for this tax year... which would amount to the not inconsiderable figure of £500,000. What do you say?'

Well... what would I say? I could use it to help found a hospital or school. I could distribute it in small gifts to individuals who might need it - to stave off bankruptcy or mortgage foreclosure, or eviction through rent debt. Or I could buy a little bolthole for myself, instead... which I could probably already do with my normal net income - but this would be like a bonus. I could justify it to myself by saying 'at least it's not being used for another government white elephant, or a nuclear sub, or to decorate a suite of offices in Whitehall.'

I suppose - whatever my principles or feelings - I can never truly know what I'd do until I'm in that position. Maybe that goes for most of the rest of us, too. Or maybe it doesn't.

Just a thought, that's all. I'm pretty certain now that I know what I'd do. But I've never been a position to think otherwise.

Is it selling out? And if it is, is it selling out in the same way as, say, investing in corrupt regimes or exploitative corporations that you've always previously actively campaigned against?

So long as Shylock presents tax avoidance schemes and the govt fails to close them down, there will alwyas be tax avoidance.
Whether it's a funny rich comedian or a boring rich banker, they're all doing the same thing so why it would be more acceptable for a comedian to rip off the system, I don't know.
Perhaps being a celebrity makes it acceptable.
It's time to choose whose side to take; the greedy or the decent.

Objectively, no, it is not more acceptable for JC to avoid tax than a banker, except maybe in the literal sense of the banker making more money than JC (I speculate), therefore evading more tax. However, as it's JC they've chosen to put in the papers, over every other tax evader in the country, I can't help feeling a certain sympathy for him, rightly or wrongly.

The bottom line of it is that it will take strong governance to change the system...

Stan, you raise a good point, and I believe someone like yourself might spend the 'saved' tax on a school or something similar. But for most it's probably 6 months fuel for their private jet.