In the midst of the Jimmy Carr tax avoidance scandal earlier this year (in case you were holidaying off-planet that week, Carr was left rather red-faced after it emerged that his accountant was channelling the comedian's earnings into a Jersey-based tax shelter), the BBC carried a fascinating interview with accountant Ronnie Ludwig. Yes, that's right, a fascinating interview. With an accountant.
As you might expect, Ludwig drew a firm distinction between tax evasion (trying to avoid playing tax by illegal means) and tax avoidance (attempting to mitigate the amount of tax you pay). But what most interested me was his answer to the question "Is morality part of your business?"
No, it isn't. We do not sit in judgment of our clients' moral values, nor do we preach morals to them. What we do is give advice based on the law.
Pushed about whether a tax avoidance scheme designed to circumvent the intent of the law would bother him, he replied: "Probably, on a personal level, yes. But I'm there to advise on the legality of it, and if this particular scheme would work, and that is it." I have no doubt that Ludwig's stance is standard practice in most areas of professional life.
Jimmy Carr at least had the decency to be embarrassed once his tax arrangements became public ("I now realise I've made a terrible error of judgment"), but yesterday a gem of a press release landed in my inbox from Nigel Green, the chief executive of the deVere Group, the world's largest independent financial advisors. Written in response to David Cameron's comments in parliament last week that he was "unhappy" with the level of tax avoidance by large corporations operating in Britain, Green retorts:
Mr Cameron is slamming companies who take legal measures to minimise their tax liabilities. Of course businesses try and mitigate their taxation as they have a responsibility to their shareholders to turn as large a profit as possible, which is both honourable and economically responsible as profit creates jobs and wealth.
That word 'honourable' really leaps out - and not just because I've italicised it. Green and his ilk appear to believe, entirely sincerely, that tax avoiders are performing a morally laudable public service. This despite the fact that the 'wealth creator' argument has already been comprehensively dismantled (for a quick overview, I recommend this brilliant column by the Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty, this article by Salon's Michael Lind, or Matt Taibbi's long profile of Mitt Romney in Rolling Stone).
Better yet, Green goes on to say in his press release that the prime minister having the audacity to refer to massive corporate tax avoidance constitutes "demonising corporations" and could "incite protest groups to employ 'direct action' tactics against major brands". David Cameron: anti-corporate rabble-rouser. It's certainly a novel approach.
Trying to frame a rational response to this level of brazen brass neckery (dictionary definition: 'someone with no sense of shame about what they do') is extremely difficult. All we can say for certain is: Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more. The global financial elite is operating in a mirror world, one in which black is white and up is down and being asked to pay your full tax bill is not only a gross imposition, but as Green makes clear, to do so would be a gross dereliction of duty to your shareholders.
Appeals to corporate conscience or the public good are now worthless. The only way to clamp down on tax avoidance is strict regulation and an aggressive approach to closing loopholes.
But the problem with closing loopholes, as Amy Rosenbaum pointed out in reference to VP nominee Paul Ryan, is that it requires standing up to the special interests that benefit from them. Unless the cosy relationship between UK politicians and multinationals is severed, the prospect of getting large corporations to pay their full tax bills seems a distant blot on the horizon.
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John Higginson: It's Time for a Corporate Delouse
Except commercial decisions have profoundly moral consequences, and to pretend otherwise is simply dogma.
“Anyone can avoid tax simpy by opening their own business and becoming highly profitable; their complaint, in my opinion, is more about their inability to do so rather than a deeply held moral belief that tax avoidance is wrong.”
Yes, you’re right, that’s precisely why I oppose corporate tax avoidance, because I am jealous of the fact I don’t own my own vastly profitable tax-avoiding business. Social justice? What does that even mean?
Business should make money and people should make/support society (with a slightly blurry edge, granted). Whilst many people's opinion is that tax avoidance is bad is doubtless driven by a sense of social justice, I have the feeling more is driven by some varient of envy. As a business we give, employ, pay tax and do our best to contribute when we can but remove the profit motive and will we carry on working until midnight and risking our homes?
Forgot the man who came up with the theory of enlightened self intest - now that'd be a system.
The problem with the American philanthropic model (blog on this to follow) is that's it's hard to avoid seeing it as giving with one hand and taking away with another. Take the example of Bill Gates: yes, he has donated vast sums to charity, but Microsoft has avoided paying billions in corporation tax over the last three or four years alone, and it is outsourcing vast amounts of jobs to China where it can pay workers a pittance due to a lack of employment law.
A final point though: I'm not advocating that firms give up seeking profit, don't worry, your home is safe. I'm simply asking that they start showing some genuine "corporate responsibility" (not just PR gloss) and recognising that a breathless pursuit of shareholder value is not always the best path to long-term profits. Oh, and paying their taxes!
You've hit the nail on the head there. It's not about demonising a handful of individual CEOs or FDs, the problem is systemic – it’s with unregulated capitalism. You’re quite right, at present it’s seen as "beyond argument" that shareholder value is the only game in town, in fact it’s come to be regarded as something more like a law of nature (at least among the financial and business community).
Except, of course, it’s nothing of the sort. Even from a business point of view, shareholder value is a poor steer to behaviour, encouraging short-term thinking and turning firms into hedge funds’ playthings. But from a wider social perspective, it’s disastrous. What else might firms consider besides shareholder value? How about: local communities, their customers, the geographic areas where they operate, sustainability, not to mention their suppliers.
You ask “Would anyone argue with procurement functions within a business attempting to lower costs of acquisition?” The answer is: yes, a huge amount of people. For example, the big British supermarkets have driven prices so low that they have endangered the profitability of a large number of their suppliers.
The waters are now far too muddied, mixing morals with commercial decisions is a dead end; one has nothing to do with the other. If I had invested in a company that voluntarily maximised their tax bill - I would disinvest immediately. Legality is one thing, morality something else entirely and highly subjective.
Anyone can avoid tax simpy by opening their own business and becoming highly profitable; their complaint, in my opinion, is more about their inability to do so rather than a deeply held moral belief that tax avoidance is wrong. How many people fill their fuel tank the day before the duty increases?
However, just because something is not illegal doesn’t mean it’s not morally suspect – until last year vulture funds activities were legal in the UK. If we’re not going to rely on “morality” to guide our actions, then legislation clearly needs to be enacted.
Personally I think the notion that shareholder profits should trump any other possible consideration is deeply pernicious and the exact opposite of "reasonable". Let’s take a private firm running health services: what is their bottom line, profits or their patients? Or are the two magically the same?
As for why you should be interested – why should anyone care about what anyone says? This is an opinion piece, no-one held a gun to your head and made you read it! I wrote a piece about a subject that interests me, marshalling anecdotes and evidence in favour of my argument. Whether you chose to agree or not is entirely up to you.