It would be lovely to devote this post to another culturally
multi-layered object leading us up paths of discovery, but it’s the time of
year when I get angry again, and I will talk about that instead.
Yes, I’ve just completed my tax return which I try to do
early to avoid nasty surprises later. I declare everything, not least because
of warning stories about what happens when HMRC investigates you. One of these
stories is from a writer who was told off by the tax inspector for inadvertently
putting a packet of Opal Fruits and some toy golf clubs through her accounts as
part of a petrol receipt. The same inspector refused to accept the writer’s
travel expenses as a legitimate deduction, even though she had worked on a
series of Round Britain guides (although I’m not clear whether receipts had
been kept).
So why get angry? Shouldn’t we all pay the right amount of
tax? Absolutely – but many large corporations do not. Two recent well-known
cases are that of Goldman Sachs, which were let off about £10 million of tax by
HMRC after they threatened to withdraw from a scheme theoretically meant to
make them pay their share of tax. In other words – they threatened to withdraw
from a scheme supposedly meant to make them pay their share of tax unless they
were… let off tax. Supposedly impartial civil servants, mainly HMRC chief Dave
Hartnett, accepted this in case the government were embarrassed by Goldman
Sachs’s threatened withdrawal. Poor loves – but that’s what friends are for.
Tax campaigners UK Uncut took HMRC to court for this. The
deal was declared legal but HMRC were severely criticised.
Another case is that of Google, which in January this year, as
some kind of goodwill gesture, offered the government £130 million from profits
of an estimated £6 billion since 2005, which the government accepted. Google
themselves said that governments should work together to change the rules to
force corporations to pay more.
Both companies, in other words, were reversing the initials
of Opal Fruits and using them on HMRC, an option which unfortunately I do not
have.
This injustice is in the context of the many shocks I have
experienced turning self-employed and exposing myself to the chill wind of
market forces as well as greater demands on your cash – sick pay, holiday pay,
pension (if you can afford one) and national insurance has to come out of the
amount charged. Expenses are not even reimbursed, remember (unlike those of regular
employees, including MPs); they are just tax-deductible – which means we still
pay either 80% or 60% of them, depending on our tax rate.
So… roll on the day when corporations are investigated and
held to account at Opal Fruit level. To that end I have written to my MP to ask
that he supports efforts by international governments to force companies to be
transparent about where they hold money.
To that end this year I also sent my accountant (who is
excellent and unfortunately incorruptible), along with my receipts, a quotation
from Shakespeare’s Pericles which
sums up the situation:
Third fisherman:
Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
First fisherman:
Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones. I can compare our
rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; a’ plays and tumbles, driving
the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful: such
whales have I heard on o’ the land, who never leave gaping until they’ve
swallowed the whole parish, church, bells, steeples and all.