When
the British comedian Jimmy Carr recently became the focal point of a
media storm around the issue of income tax avoidance by the rich via
overseas investment, he was nothing more than a scapegoat for right-wing
monetarists within the Conservative Party who still believe themselves
exempt from legal and financial obligation. David Cameron referred to
Carr’s tax avoidance as ‘morally wrong’, but this is sheer hypocrisy as
his own family fortune and the wealth of fellow Conservative supporters
have prospered from tax avoidance.
When
the British comedian Jimmy Carr recently became the focal point of a
media storm around the issue of income tax avoidance by the rich via
overseas investment, he was nothing more than a scapegoat for right-wing
monetarists within the Conservative Party who still believe themselves
exempt from legal and financial obligation. David Cameron referred to
Carr’s tax avoidance as ‘morally wrong’, but this is sheer hypocrisy as
his own family fortune and the wealth of fellow Conservative supporters
have prospered from tax avoidance.
Amidst jaunty columnists’ puns about fellow tax-avoider and Tory-supporter Gary Barlow being from the band Take That,
there is something much less humorous and, actually downright sinister,
about Cameron’s refusal to comment on Barlow’s own tax avoidance.
Conservative supporters and party members David Rowland, Lord Astor,
Lord Ashcroft and George Osborne are also facing speculation regarding
their income tax avoidance, but it seems that these individuals are
absolved of the same moral codes and obligations as everybody else.
Downing Street has also suggested that it “may now abandon plans for
David Cameron and senior ministers to disclose their tax returns”
(Guardian 21/06/12) which had previously been part of a plan to redeem
the cabinet in the eyes of the electorate. However, this backpedaling
clearly illustrates the uncooperative and conceited nature of the Tory
party and the like-minded super-rich in Britain; defending each other’s
immoral practices in order to protect their own interests. This entire
scandal has revealed to the public just how fickle politicians can be
when they too get caught red-handed.
These
revelations have political implications, they have also raised
questions about Britain’s entire financial system of tax ‘loopholes’,
‘havens’ and overseas ‘investment schemes’, also ambiguously referred to
as ‘profit-extraction techniques’ and ‘income-sheltering solutions’,
essentially providing the super-rich with the ability to reduce their
income tax rate to as little as one per cent.
The
Jersey-based ‘K2’ Scheme, in which Carr and Barlow were both
implicated, is just one example of such an overseas scheme, but numerous
others exist elsewhere in the world. Investigation into the Cameron
family has revealed that the late Ian Cameron founded his family’s
wealth upon the establishment of such schemes in both Panama-City and
Geneva. The schemes themselves allow financiers to invest money in
off-shore companies without taxation (thanks to the 1979 abolition of
exchange control), which they can retrieve at any time through ‘company
loans’, none of which they need to pay back if – like the late Ian
Cameron – they hold a directorship or chair position in said off-shore
company.(Guardian 20.04.12)
This
method, according to numerous news reports, has lost the UK Treasury an
estimated £4.5 billion a year, the K2 scheme alone sheltering £168m a
year. While this may equate to very little in relation to the size of
the current UK national debt, this does highlight the disgraceful
hypocrisy of politicians hell-bent on squeezing every penny out of
supposed ‘benefits scroungers’, slandering strikers and protesters
whilst pursuing ferocious cuts to the NHS, to education, to
public-sector pensions and – just recently – threatening to cut housing
benefits to under 25s.
Nevertheless,
slandering one comedian or attacking one politician, or even an entire
political party, holds no solutions. As Marx said succinctly in Das Capital (Volume II, Ch. 18) “every individual capitalist is but an individual element of the capitalist class”,
the problem therefore does not exist among individual capitalists but
is inherent in the entire capitalist system. As this particular income
tax avoidance issue demonstrates, capitalists will continually find the
means to exploit the state and the working class in the interests of
profit. Unless the working class are able to seize control of financial
law, not just nationally, but internationally, then financial law will
always be dominated by capitalists and the super-rich and dictated by
the interests of capitalism.The best way to achieve this – in truth the only way – is the expropiation of the wealth of the rich and the nationalisation of the monopolies and banks. This would be the one thing they couldn’t avoid through any fancy scheme.
