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This obsession with removing the privacy of the rich is misplaced anger
TIM STANLEY
6 NOVEMBER 2017 • 7:27PM
We're obsessed with the goings on of the rich, yet we ignore those who are truly powerful
We mistrust the rich and their power, yet while the state has far more influence over our lives, we do not held it to the same standards
When the Paradise Papers story broke on Sunday, I watched the BBC News channel engage in some flagrant editorialising.
The Queen’s private estate invested a sum of money offshore in 2005, which prompted a chorus of “it doesn’t look good”. “Oh no, not good”. “Not good at all”. Well, as the nudist said to the dog walker, if you don’t like what you see, don’t look!
“This desire to know what people do with their money is unhealthy and it has just one motivation: to squeeze them
Before we get onto the question of tax privacy, let’s shoot down this absurd idea that Her Majesty is guilty of something. First, offshore investments are legal. Second, Her Majesty pays tax on all her income. Third, the cash that generates said income is managed not by her but by the Duchy of Lancaster, which is technically run by a member of the Cabinet known as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
In 2005, that would’ve been a Labour Party appointee. So, while the Left is thrilled at the prospect that Her Majesty is the pirate queen of high finance, blame lies not with the monarch but with politicians and speculators. If blame is the right word because, as I said, none of this was actually illegal.
Is it any of our business? In the case of the Queen, maybe, as she is a figure of considerable public interest. But, on the whole, no. This desire to know what people do with their money is unhealthy and it has just one motivation: to squeeze them for every penny they’ve got.
When I was a young socialist I’d have said that was a jolly good idea. We all benefit from public spending, and the more you’ve got the more you should contribute. But as an older, greyer cynic I take the view that the rich shouldn’t have to pay unfairly for the mistakes made by the state.
The state has grown and grown, with no obvious improvement in competence, and the tax share of the wealthy has trebled since the Seventies. This is unsustainable and, in acknowledgement of that reality, moderate governments have long tolerated certain generous tax arrangements to stop the golden goose from migrating permanently abroad.
If a radical Labour government came in and closed the loopholes, investors would relocate altogether. In a roundabout way, tax havens keep pressure on politicians not to raise rates to unreasonable levels and, were the world to eradicate them, the burden here at home would probably go sky high.
If we must suffer the tax haven, why not go for full transparency? Because what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and if the super-rich have to fling open their accounts to the rest of the world, you and I will have to do the same, too.
All that will fly out of mine, I hasten to add, is a couple of moths. The only tax haven a poor man like me is ever likely to use is the spot under my mattress. But that’s not the point: privacy is a principle that’s worth losing a bit of tax income to protect.
That’s not a very politically correct thing to write in an age of populism, but I stand by it. We are led to believe that the rich have too much power and influence, but they cannot compete with a state that increasingly has both the technology and the will to examine and regulate every aspect of our lives.
“We’ve all become so used to paying Big Brother to tell us what to do that we’ve ceased to notice it
Take driving a car. To earn the right to crawl along the M25 behind a horsebox, you have to pay for and pass both a theory and practical test, purchase insurance, get an MOT, and cough up for vehicle and fuel tax. The Government not only tells you what speed to drive at but regulates it punitively with cameras – which adds insult to injury given that many of our roads are about as well maintained as the surface of the moon.
We’ve all become so used to paying Big Brother to tell us what to do that we’ve ceased to notice it. And yet the nerve of the state is breathtaking. It is the state that distributes the Queen’s taxes, a branch of the state that arguably deserves responsibility for how it managed her income and now it is the state, via the BBC, that investigates and exposes it.
A line must be drawn.
It’s the historic mission of the Conservative Party to draw it. They are supposed to be the people who resist wars against business and wealth, defend due process and protect the rights of the individual.
In recent years, however, they’ve endorsed raw emotionalism, terrified by the belief that what Labour says about tax, justice or the welfare system is what the voters believe, too. Well, they need to stop reading Twitter and talk to some of their more rational constituents.
Yes, every time the Tories take a stand against tax populism, they get horrid headlines in The Guardian, but they have won elections over and over again because the voters understand the facts of life better than Labour and the many agents of the state do.
For decades we have seen the expanding power of the police, teachers, civil servants, social workers and tax collectors, all protected by deference thought due to public servants and the claim that they are acting in the public interest. Who will act in the individual’s interest? The Tories must do so fast, before we’re all forced to go and live in, oh let’s say, Bermuda – drinking piña coladas beneath a tax-free sun.
