And then ‘Geldof Exploded’
May 17th, 2012 by Donagh
“It has taken me a long time to understand that there is a connection between colonial powers and corruption. “The United Kingdom has maintained its privileges by allowing British companies to operate from their own tax havens. The expansion in the use of these jurisdictions has a link to decolonisation. It is a modern form of colonialism,” she says adding that many of the big tax havens in the world are under British control.
Eva Joly, the Norwegian-born investigating magistrate who broke open the “Elf Affair” in Paris, regarded as Europe’s largest fraud investigation since the Second World War. From an interview in Development Today.
I find it more than a little ironic that Bob Geldof is claiming non-dom status in the UK to reduce his reportedly substantial earnings within the British Realm. According to Nick Shaxson in Treasure Islands the ‘non-domiciled ’ status is a legacy of Britain’s colonial era, where a British subject while performing his duties as an administrator in India for example, would be considered to be ‘resident’ in India but domiciled in his ‘home’, the land of his birth. A change in the law in 1911 however, allowed those who were originally from outside of the UK to avoid tax on the international earnings even though they would be resident in Britain. It is exploited by Greek shipping magnets, Russian oligarchs, Arab Sheiks and Irish media moguls/poverty peddlers.
“The very existence of the resident but non-dom category is an outrageous sop to a small number of highly vocal and well-connected rich folk and their lobbyists. The unequal treatment of equals introduced by the creation of the non-dom (resident but non-domiciled for the purpose of income tax and inheritance tax) category undermines respect for the law among the tax paying public at large. . . Every UK resident should pay UK income taxes on his/her worldwide income. End of story.
Willem Buiter, Financial Times, February 2008
Still, not too surprising, I guess, given that Geldof is a product of that hothouse of the Irish catholic bourgeoisie, Blackrock College.
And I can’t help but laugh when I hear that he gets very annoyed when his hypocrisy is highlighted.
BOB GELDOF lashed out at a reporter this week after he was asked about his tax arrangements, bizarrely demanding to know how many irrigation ditches her salary had built.
Geldof, who was in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for the World Economic Forum, was interviewed by Times journalist Lucy Bannerman. Their encounter appeared to go very well at first, with Geldof talking about the huge changes that have taken place in Africa since Live Aid in 1985.Then Bannerman asked him about his tax status. After confirming that he is a non-dom and can legally avoid income and capital gains tax on international earnings, Geldof laughed off the Sunday Times Rich List estimate of his worth (£32 million).
When pressed on how much tax he actually paid – the justification for the question being because his big idea, aid, can come from taxes – Geldof exploded.
“I pay all my taxes,” he shouted. “My time? Is that not a tax? I employ 500 people. I have created business for the UK government. I have given my ideas. I have given half my life to this.”
In a bizarre, heated exchange Geldof jabbed his finger repeatedly at Bannerman and demanded to know how many irrigation ditches she had built with her salary.The tirade ended with Geldof yelling: “How dare you lecture me about morals”, before being led away by his entourage.
I was reading this morning in David Harvey’s A Companion to Marx’s Capital’ about how poverty is an essential part of the process of capital accumulation. Advances in technology to not increase the rate of profit by themselves. Rather they increase the availability of surplus labour – that famous “reserve army of the unemployed”. The reserve army of course is useful in ensuring that wages are moderated and labour market flexibility allows for expansion and contraction of the business cycle while maintain profitability. It also leads to a deskilling of the workforce and poorer quality jobs and encourage those who have jobs to work longer hours for the same pay because they are ‘lucky’ to have a job.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that argument from the wealthy that they’ve created jobs and that those salaries have paid taxes. As though that gives them a free pass not to pay tax on their own income, as though the tax paid by their employees is actually part of the business owner’s tax liability and a cost to the business paid from the profits of the business rather than part of the social contract between the employee as citizen and the state. In Geldof’s case not so much the entrepreneur/businessman as the businessman /philanthropist, but with that same sense of gifting his contribution to society rather than recognising it as a binding responsibility.
Well there is one argument that is always ignored by those who seem to think that they have some form of ‘magic’ that makes them capable of creating jobs out of nothing and that tax is a gift which they may or may not choose to pay to the state. It is this. The state chooses to allow them the opportunity to set up business in the first place. It allows them to own property and to trade, create ‘value’ and earn a profit.
Geldof earned money in the UK because the UK government provided the conditions to do that. However, this is not a one way deal. Part of that agreement is that a certain portion of what his business earns returns to the state so that the UK government can maintain those conditions for creating business etc for others. Did Geldof educate these employees of his - sometimes to third and fourth level? Does he heal them when they are sick? Does he hold his healing hands over their children’s broken limbs when they fall from a tree? Does he pay to get them to work, or provide advice and information for them when they need to know things to help them survive?
When Geldof avoids tax he is reneging on the deal that allowed him to establish a business in the first place and to earn millions from the profits of that business. The money that should be paid in tax is not his to hold on to or make arrangements to avoid paying - its not his in the first place. The fucker is stealing that money. If it is only about creating jobs and generating tax from their income the government could that without needing people like Geldof to borrow money to lease office space and employ people and earn a profit from what he borrowed.
“My time? Is that not a tax?” ….oh, good grief the man has lost all sense of reality altogether with a statement like that.
well at least Lucy bannermann did not finance and help corrupt african government officials to buy arms which were used to kill lots of other poor africans. Bob should just get off that high horse of his and pay his taxes.
Sir Bob pay tax! As a non-dom he pays the grand sum of £30,000 per annum plus taxes on UK earnings (which via creative accountancy is probably zilch). And don’t forget that other habitual tax evader Bono who is set to become the “world’s richest musician” on the back of the Facebook IPO: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/bono-facebook-u2-singer-worlds-richest-musician_n_1526972.html A beautiful day indeed.
“Does he heal them when they are sick? Does he hold his healing hands over their children’s broken limbs when they fall from a tree?”
I suspect he may ask that other philanthropic, spoofer St. Bono of Finglas/Ballymun/Killiney (delete location as appropriate) to carry out any required miracles.
Indeed, when some poorly paid scribe is writing the lives of the latter-day “rocker saints” in a cramped cubical for the likes of the Mother Geldof he will no doubt record that St. Bono was only ever capable of performing one miracle - turning musical dross into mountains of cash.