Earlier today I spoke with Richard Murphy over the Barclays tax avoidance issue. If you’re not familiar, The Guardian claims that Barclays has entered into a series of complex tax avoidance schemes to the tune of $16 BILLION. Barclays lawyers sought a gag order preventing it from reproducing documents it had received from a whistleblower.
Much of our conversation must, of necessity be treated as confidential but what staggers us both is the scale of what the bank has been up to. Both he and I are betting that other high street bank names are equally egregious in their aggressive treatment of tax regimes. Implicated in the Barclays story are our old friends PwC who earned £8 million in FY 2007 for tax services and £5 million for:
Services relating to corporate finance transactions entered into or proposedto be entered into by or on behalf of the Company or any of its associates
That’s £13 million out of a total £44 million on fees paid.
But to the wider issue. The scale of the avoidance is now such that HMRC simply cannot let this go. More important, where does it end?
Barclays must be running scared if they found it necessary to keep The Guardian’s lawyers up until 2.30 am. As well they should. The burning question though is where does this lead to? You might argue that in the scale of the global financial meltdown it is a drop in the ocean. I doubt that’s the way the man in the street will see it. What will it take for the otherwise honest man to turn around and say: ‘No more’ and engage in civil disobedience. Remember the Poll Tax riots? However you choose to sanitize and dumb down, it is now getting very scary out there and I for one don’t believe government has a clue just how serious this could all get. Or if it does, then it is standing idly by.
UPDATE: Documents subject to a gagging order can be found here. Richard provides a 4 post blockbuster for dealing with errant banks. It starts here.
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