Tax haven schemes cost the United States $100 billion per year. In the UK, tax dodgers like Vodafone have caused the government to enact Draconian cuts to education and public services leading to the second-biggest protest in the entire history of London, this last weekend. UK Uncut emerged from a handful of citizen groups protesting outside the stores of tax dodger, Vodafone and that has spread to America outside businesses like Bank of America.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the policy of targeting corporations, naming and targeting corporations, Johann?
JOHANN HARI: Well, what’s happening at the moment is a huge transfer of wealth. In addition to this huge austerity program, what we’re seeing is a huge transfer of wealth. Taxes are going up on the middle class and the poor, services are being cut for them, while there are being big tax cuts for people at the top. This has been going on for a long time. It went on under the last government to some degree, the Labour government, as well, but not to anything like the same degree.
And just to give you one example, the sixth-richest man in Britain is a person called Philip Green. In 2009, he earned 1.6 billion pounds and paid nothing in tax. That’s nothing. You know, the average person on the street paid more tax than him.
Give you another example, Vodafone, one of the biggest cell phone companies in the world and huge here in Britain, had been refusing to pay a large part of its tax bill for absolutely years. It bought a German company. It was claiming that the deal ran through a post office box in Luxembourg, even though they’ve got no business in Luxembourg. Whole thing was nonsense. They built up a huge tax bill that the Labour government was fighting for, six billion pounds, enough to cover the cost of all the housing subsidies. All those poor people are going to be forced out of their homes. When the conservatives came to power, they more or less canceled that tax bill. They canceled almost all of it. It’s a very powerful symbol of their priorities: you know, huge—hand out a huge amount of money to the rich, take it away from the poor.
These companies use the services and infrastructure that all of us pay for but they do not contribute to the cost of those services. Johann Hari continues
…let’s just do a thought experiment. You know, for one month, I’d like to do an experiment. Say Philip Green, the guy—hugely wealthy guy, refuses to pay taxes in Britain. Let’s take one of his stores for one month and take away all the services he refuses to pay for. So we won’t collect the garbage out of the back. When the rats come, we won’t send pest control. If there’s a shoplifter, we won’t send the police. If there’s a fire, we won’t send the fire brigade. If the staff get sick, they can’t get treated in public hospitals. And let him come back at the end of that month and say he did it all himself. He doesn’t do it all himself. These people make money using the infrastructure that all of us pay for. Now, there’s a term for that in medical literature: it’s called parasitism. If you are feeding on a body but contributing nothing to it, you’ve turned yourself into a parasite.
Perhaps, if companies like Bank of America and General Electric tried to continue business without government services like taxpayer funded bailouts, for a year, we might see just how well they do.
