Tax Havens: Destroying laissez-Faire Capitalism’s Final Refuge.
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In these extraordinarily precarious times, It is time for National governments and the world’s biggest economies to put an end to capitalism’s open and very dirty secret.
Tax avoidance, it must be said has always been with us. Along with this salient fact of the wealthiest among us avoiding their responsibilities, has been the existence of tax havens. In Europe, nation states and principalities such as Switzerland and Monaco were favored destinations for plutocrats operating in the early post war period, when high taxes became the order of the day, across many western nations.
Back in the 1960s, when vast numbers of celebrities were unhappy at the tax bill, with which they were saddled, the singer, song writer, John Lennon was approached by two gentlemen, who were once employees of Arthur Andersen, now known today as Accenture. These gentlemen had worked out the best way to circumvent being encumbered with a huge bill from the Inland revenue (British equivalent of the IRS)and they were now selling this trick to a world famous artiste.
These men, Roy Tucker and Ian Plummer perfectly understood how to game the system and worked out that if they were quite successful in helping the legendary Beetle of the day in paying very little tax, then vast numbers of people within the ranks of rich would follow suit.
And that was exactly how things panned out.
Other Celebrities were ensnared by what they regarded a much needed respite from the claws of the almighty tax man.
Until the very long arms of the law, eventually caught up with Messrs. Tucker and Plummer, closing them down in the early 1970s, when their hubris got the better of them, these gentlemen had dared to do what no one else could do and succeeded on a massive scale.
The highly creative tax avoidance scheme of Messrs. Plummer and Tucker, had whetted the appetite of Britain’s wealthy elite for shirking their moral obligations and prepared the ground for the world of the 80s and beyond.
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