Tax evaders should be social pariahs

"How you doing in the cheap seats? Oh, there aren't any."

Never fear - I didn't spend hundreds of quid on Sunday night just to be abused by Mick Jagger, an ageing Narcissus who is worth hundreds of millions.

I don't envy the thousands who have forked out for the much-hyped - and much-hyperventilated-over - Rolling Stones shows at the O2.

Like many others, in some spare time over the weekend I caught a bit of the "new" Stones documentary Crossfire Hurricane on BBC iPlayer.

In fact I'm a bit of a fan of the Stones' music - well, up to the point they became boring old farts in the mid-1970s and punk picked up the gauntlet of rock'n'roll rebellion.

But I was deeply bored by the film. It was the usual clips and the usual story of enthusiasm followed by success, then tax-exile followed by excess.

I guess excess is fun to do yourself but it isn't to watch. It's like watching drying paint. Or listening to extended guitar solos.

I thought to myself - why is the BBC paying our good money to promote these guys and their 50th anniversary gold-digging tour? Haven't these multimillionaires got enough?

And why is their tax exile, whether it was technically avoidance or evasion, such a celebrated myth, rather than a social stigma like, say, child abuse? You don't see Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter clip shows any more.

I pressed pause and thought I'd play the Beatles clip documentary just next to it on iPlayer.

The interweb life mixes up genres just like a DJ sampling beats and pop tunes. And it weaves some funny patterns in your mind.

It occurred to me that the rights to a lot of Beatles tunes were once owned by the late Michael Jackson, erstwhile prince of pop and a man I wouldn't have left with his own children, never mind mine.

Right then a Rangers-supporting Facebook pal popped up with the Beatles song Taxman on his profile.

He was just having some fun - as the judges in the Rangers' big tax case had come down two to one last week to rule that the employee benefit trusts (EBTs) the club had used to provide eye-watering "loans" for players and others were legal.

Who got ripped off? I'd say we, the taxpayers did - but the current state of the case is that these payments were legal.

I'd also say that Rangers fans were ripped off, since it was their ticket money and their subs to TV companies - paid directly or via their pints in pubs and clubs - which ended up in the pockets of people who haven't paid tax on it and won't now need to repay it. Though I hear Rangers fans saying it was all worth it to see such talent as Gazza and Laudrup.

My bluenose Facebook pal - a lovely guy in fact - told me I was being a bit po-faced when I joked that here were the Beatles, a bunch of young millionaires whinging about having to pay tax.

Well, maybe I am. I too love the Beatles. Who doesn't?

But a year after singing Taxman the Fab Four were trawling round the Aegean looking for a Greek island to buy as a tax haven. While the Greek people were struggling to free themselves from the colonels' right-wing junta.

Bring this up to date, I hear you say.

Sure. My next click was to google tax avoidance.

And I found... Google tax avoidance. Not here, which we've already heard of. Down under in Australia.

Apparently Assistant Treasury Minister David Bradbury caused consternation at the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia's national tax conference when he revealed the recipe for a "double Irish Dutch sandwich."

That's not a lunch option or a porn euphemism. It's the scam through which Google pays AU$700k tax or less on over AU$1 billion annual revenues in Australia. Less than 0.1 per cent.

Google operates a series of holding companies in different countries so they earn money in Australia but bounce it around low-tax regimes, one of which is the Irish republic, to end up paying virtually nothing.

Google is incredibly popular, just like the Beatles. Its motto is "don't be evil."

It makes a lot of money out of us all while we're enjoying ourselves - just like the pop business and big-league football.

The Australian minister revealed its scam and has pledged action - Labour Eds take note. But he'll be pissing in the wind, to use a phrase beloved of my Australian pals, unless he's joined by governments around the world in sorting out scams like EBTs and double Irish Dutch sandwiches.

Google, Facebook... don't even get me started on Amazon, from whom most people now buy their fun in the form of music, movies, games, books and consumer electronics. Anti-union tax-dodgers much lauded by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who wants to cut Scotland's corporation tax to the same level as Ireland's.

Which leads me to conjure up Shir Shean Connery, who lives abroad but funds the SNP, and Sir Tom Garmer, the patriotic Scottish non-dom multimillionaire who lives in Monaco. But that's another article...

It's the job of experts like radical tax accountant Richard Murphy and the media like the Morning Star to expose the scams.

The labour and trade union movement has to put pressure on governments to act.

And our job as citizens is to be more critical of rip-offs and tax avoidance and evasion, not just by nasty banks and energy companies and corporate-suit non-doms, but by the more cuddly showbiz and sports stars and all-pervasive internet services which we love to enjoy and often hate to blame for ripping us off.

Not paying your fair share of tax should cause you to be a social pariah rather than a rich celebrity. Let's stop indulging the playboys and playgirls. They ain't gonna rule my world.