SPIDER IN THE WEB… A BRIEF WORD ABOUT THE INLAND REVENUE

In the last week we’ve all heard a lot about the operations of HSBC, that’s the Hong Kong and Shanghai  Banking Corporation, who’ve been running their own very private little outfit in Switzerland. You know the place. All those mountains and lakes and full of nice views. But don’t let it kid you! The country also makes cheese and cuckoo clocks, those pretty little chalet style boxes where a bird keeps popping out and making a noise. And of course it’s a place where rich people go skiing. But don’t let that kid you either. It makes its real money out of secrecy, banks where seriously rich people from dictators to mobsters and billionaire business tycoons store all the loot they’ve made one way or another without anyone knowing it. Secrecy is everything so no-one asks any questions in Switzerland! The money, precious metals or gems are all there hidden away on behalf of its owners without anyone else ever being able to get their hands on it. Hidden away and immune from any taxation. In other words it’s a country that stores the loot made out of everyone else on the planet including the tax payers themselves.

There’s nothing that it’s banking system turns down. You name it and they’ll hide it away. Anything from  Nazi gold bars made out of Jew’s teeth yanked out of the living or dead in the death camps to drugs cartel laundry… from money donated to African nations for the wellbeing of their people stolen by the thugs that run them to blood diamonds. I mean, when we’re talking Swiss banks we’re not talking about you and your wife’s current account! That kind of thing’s for the birds. Sure they’ve got a few here and there but the really serious stuff is quite a bit different. Altogether more private. The outfit HSBC ran there for years was known to only its clients along with the four big accounting firms that handle the taxes of most of the world’s major businesses and corporations. It’s where they channel much of the money they make, keeping it away from Governments so that it can’t be taxed and used to help feed, clothe and house poor people.  After all, fair’s fair! Why should they be supported by the efforts of a few thousand clever dicks having a serious slice of their hard earned dosh go in taxes to pay for all the saps who worked to make them their money?

So in Switzerland there’s this oh so very private HSBC operation with tens of thousands of accounts storing thousands of billions of untaxable loot. Courtesy of the smart accountants and lawyers who make sure it’s all stashed there anonymously. And all of us never knew a blind thing about such a trick until recently when information from a whistleblowers list suddenly became public. Not that the list itself had been secret. Oh no, it had been in the public domain since 2007 but kind of hidden under the radar if you know what I mean until the BBC got hold of it and put it up on the news. Then all hell broke loose. It seemed that all kinds of people knew about it from the Treasury, that’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Department of Government, to the civil servants who run Britain’s tax affairs, our very own Inland Revenue. Yes, they knew all about HSBC’s little wealth storage system but kind of didn’t say anything! They knew that hundreds of billions were kept away from lawful taxation but didn’t feel obliged to do anything or actually tell anyone! Now how do you like that?

Well, we all know now, thanks to the efforts of that great Parliamentary institution, that people’s watchdog with a vengeance chaired by that remarkably earnest and honest Parliamentarian Margaret Hodge, that this little collection of civil servants known for better or worse as THE INLAND REVENUE made a number of special private deals and arrangements with multinationals like bankers Goldman Sachs and telecom giant Vodafone to help them avoid paying the full amount in lawful taxation on the profit they earned. Yes, these little deals between civil servants responsible for collecting taxes used by our Government to pay for the welfare of the poor and unemployed, taxes that once helped students pay for their studies and paid for so much other Government expenditure... were all kept very secret and private and eventually, thanks to the investigations of the Public Accounts Committee were revealed as, wait for it, SWEETHEART DEALS. An extraordinary name for the quite extraordinary activity of civil servants conspiring to prevent lawful taxation for the benefit of millions of British citizens. The secrecy of this activity along with its character actually makes it quite conspiratorial.

Consider if you will certain other activities of our Inland Revenue, particularly members of its Executive. It is already well known that some hold senior positions even directorships in companies operating in overseas tax havens and give advice, for a fee of course, to their clients about depositing their earnings in such havens so as to best spread their tax liability. The fee is important of course! Why, do you think these so called public servants, employed by the Government and the taxpayer who pay them a wage, would hand out their specialist knowledge and wisdom to big business free of charge? Don’t be ridiculous! I mean, what planet were you born on! Do you think that these people have been organising SWEETHEART DEALS for multinationals for a packet of popcorn?

No, the Inland Revenue sits at the center of a vast web. Around it are multinational corporations and the firms of accountants and lawyers who work for them, then there’s the Treasury and senior members of Government like Tory Chancellor George Osborne and his Liberal Democrat Deputy Danny Alexander. But that’s only a part of it really. There are the banks and other major financial institutions along with the offshore and overseas tax havens, then there are certain very private very wealthy individuals best described as the billionaires’ club. These are a very different species of being, for taxation purposes you understand, to the many hundreds of thousands of small businessmen, self-employed people from taxi drivers to those who work in the building trade. And finally, tens of millions of plain ordinary workers from public servants like teachers, NHS staff, policemen and firemen to shop workers and council employees. This last group forms the vast bulk of taxpayers in this country and can all be bundled up neatly in a box with the label on it, Pay As You Earn, PAYE for short. Tax is deducted from these millions of people at source according to strict well defined criteria with no room possible for such things as expenses.   

Numerically the largest body in the web liable for predetermined categories of taxation are the wage earners whose deductions are entirely predetermined by law and regulated by the Inland Revenue. Thus the vast bulk of the income earning population have no power whatsoever to challenge this deduction made from their labour. As a collection of millions they sit in the web like passive flies caught up in a system and ready to be stung by the spider that’s only doing its duty by law no less and passive is the very best way to describe them. A passive though often unwilling prey that has no alternative but to participate in its own feast. That of being part eaten alive on a regular monthly basis!

The same cannot be said of our billionaire businessmen and multinational corporations! For these, although they sit in the web they have evolved highly protective devices and mechanisms which dilute if not entirely nullify the capacity of the Inland Revenue to feed off them. For example they are able to register their businesses overseas where taxation is very considerably lower than in the UK and with this safety mechanism in mind are able to negotiate their tax liability with the collection spider! Actually negotiate it to the potentially mutual benefit of both. The Inland Revenue excuses them of the bulk of their liability from corporate earnings if they volunteer to pay some small percentage of the money actually owed. This as we now know is called a SWEETHEART DEAL with its actual operation in specific cases supposedly kept secret from Government, but then actually who knows how true this is?

Such deals are made possible because the very wealthy along with big business have both the facility to make alternative arrangement for where they financially operate or have the means to employ expert assistance and knowledge to help them circumvent localized legal systems and internationalize their responsibilities and duties.

Now just imagine a situation where you as a PAYE fly in the web contact the spider and ask if it’s possible for her to fix you up with your very own sweetheart deal. I mean just you and her. She won’t have to tell anybody! It’ll just be private between you! Well now, just you think of what she might do. Do you think it might be an invitation into her boudoir or would she take a serious bite out of your arse? Sorry my friend, sweetheart deals are only for rich old daddy corporations not cheapos like you! They’re for multinational executives and their shareholders, not for common and garden NHS workers or plasterers and decorators, even if they do hail from lovely Essex! No it’s all very clear and you’d better get your head round the fact. Where the Inland Revenue is concerned there are rules laid down for working people whatever they like to call themselves and a well laid down system of permissiveness for the wealthy, and if you want to play kiss-kiss with the spider then you’ll need protection, unless that is you want a serious dose of the nasties!

For the rich and the multinationals there are always the accountants and lawyers ready to give them a jab of immunity and the spider in the web knows it. Her powers are muted. She can’t pox them up anymore so she’d best cut a deal! The PAYE masses don’t have that kind of muscle. Don’t have HSBC working for them in sunny Switzerland! But then hands up all of you who think that David Cameron and his Tory Government didn’t know anything at all about HSBC? And hands up all those of you who think that his Treasury told their civil service employees in the Revenue to keep quiet because sooner or later the smell would vanish out of the news.

The Inland Revenue sits at the center of the spider’s web with its legs all touchy and feely across the silk thread. It has various deals going with stuff on the periphery, a live and let live policy of arrangements with powerful friends who’ve also got friends. For the rest, that’s you and me bro, we’re just there for the lady’s regular feeding. She lets us live so she can suck on our blood.

However let me introduce my own Manifesto. Comrades, flies of all countries unite. Band together to avoid paying our taxes. Our unity is in our strength. We are Many and the Inland Revenue is One. Let all of us on PAYE suddenly demand a million exemptions. Let us unite together and drown them in demands. Download a million requests onto their system. Overload it, watch it jam up and then perish. Then we can take all our savings from tax and invest it in HSBC. Become its majority shareholder from the strength of our own new People’s Multinational Corporation.

Let our slogan be… PAYE TAXPAYERS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE! WE CAN BLOW THE REVENUE SPIDER OUT OF ITS WEB! WE HAVE A WORLD TO WIN!

And Margaret Hodge, as Chairman of the People’s Committee of ordinary PAYE taxpayers, may I invite you, as leader of our future 30 million strong army in Britain, to march at our head and carry our banner!