One Law for the Rich, One Law for the Poor

The headlines today concerned the dubious dealings of the Swiss subsidiary of the HSBC Bank. The subsidiary had been actively encouraging tax evasion on an industrial scale. People were walking out of its Swiss Banks with huge amounts of cash. Neither the bank nor the customers were declaring their accounts in fact both parties were keeping them secret. Now I find this very funny as in my experience is that it is very difficult to open a legitimate UK bank account. You have to jump through all sorts of hoops, if you don’t have your inside leg measurement there is no chance of being able to deposit money.

This reminds me of a colleague I worked with. He received a bonus that he wanted to use to pay off part of his mortgage. So he went into his local building society where he was well known. “I would like to pay of my mortgage using this cheque” he said. “I am sorry sir but you will need photo ID” came the reply. This exasperated my friend who had visited this branch regularly. After a further refusal he proffered the suggestion that the building society place a poster in their window advertising for people to pay off my friend’s mortgage. Inevitably they could not see the funny side of this.

Getting back to the tax evasion scandal, when the government were asked as to how many prosecutions there had been for tax evasion over the last few years, the answer was one. Why because we like to deal with these matters as a civil case confidentially? So there was also no chance of us naming and shaming the tax evaders. There was then the question, how many of the tax avoiders contributed to party political funding, again confidential.

Consider the contrast with the way we deal with people claiming benefits. Firstly there are a huge number of hoops to negotiate to maintain ones entitlement. Fail one of these and all money is completely cut off with no redress. Similarly fraudsters are regularly taken to court, named and shamed in their local media. Don’t get me wrong, I am as against fraud as the next man and believe that it should be prosecuted. But if it is a right to name and shame the person defrauding their benefits, is not also right to do that to those committing tax frauds. One might assume that they might be more sensitive to reputational damage. Similarly should there not be quick penalties imposed by the tax office.

Justice is fundamental to our civilised society, but equally fundamental is that it should not favour anybody because of money or influence, and it should be absolutely transparent. There should be an outcry about this, and similarly about the dubious tax practices of many of out=r high earners. A fair society is a just society!