Wealthy businessmen who engage in large-scale legal tax avoidance face ethical questions just as much as do young looters, a leading political journalist has claimed.
Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, said there was ‘something very phony and hypocritical’ about the ‘shock and outrage’ expressed by MPs in yesterday’s debate on this week’s riots in English cities.
He claimed that MPs – some of whom had cheated on their expenses – spoke as if the events had ‘nothing to do with them’. But, he argued, ‘the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society’.
‘It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington,’ he wrote in an article that has attracted more than 2,300 comments.
Oborne said he would guess that few of his fellow guests at a recent dinner party in west London ‘bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it’. Fewer still, he added, ‘feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off’.
Oborne criticised the tax arrangements of Sir Philip Green – a ‘brilliant retailer’ – and the Labour MP Hazel Blears.
He asserted that Green, who ‘sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore’ in 2005, ‘seems to have little intention of paying for much of ... Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers’.
Oborne added: ‘I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?’
Tax Journal has invited Green’s Arcadia group to comment. Responding last year to critics of his appointment as head of a review of government spending, Green told the BBC: ‘My wife's not a tax exile, my family do not live in the UK ... We do pay all our tax in Britain. I think we have paid over the last five years some £300-400 million in taxes on profits that have been made on our company. I'm a UK taxpayer, I work here every week, we employ 45,000 people in the UK and we have got a £500 million payroll.’
One anonymous Telegraph reader responded: ‘I will tell you the difference, say, between Philip Green's billion pound offshore dividend and the looters ransacking the place: Green has actually done something for his wealth. He's taken risks, he's ventured capital, he's employed people and I'm pretty sure he has contributed financially ...’
But many readers described Oborne’s article as ‘brilliant’ or ‘excellent’.
Arcadia Group’s stores, which include Topshop and Miss Selfridge, continue to be targeted by protestors against tax avoidance, albeit on a much smaller scale than last December’s protests. Small groups claimed to have staged protests outside Topman and Topshop stores in Yorkshire last Saturday.
Wealthy businessmen who engage in large-scale legal tax avoidance face ethical questions just as much as do young looters, a leading political journalist has claimed.
Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, said there was ‘something very phony and hypocritical’ about the ‘shock and outrage’ expressed by MPs in yesterday’s debate on this week’s riots in English cities.
He claimed that MPs – some of whom had cheated on their expenses – spoke as if the events had ‘nothing to do with them’. But, he argued, ‘the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society’.
‘It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington,’ he wrote in an article that has attracted more than 2,300 comments.
Oborne said he would guess that few of his fellow guests at a recent dinner party in west London ‘bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it’. Fewer still, he added, ‘feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off’.
Oborne criticised the tax arrangements of Sir Philip Green – a ‘brilliant retailer’ – and the Labour MP Hazel Blears.
He asserted that Green, who ‘sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore’ in 2005, ‘seems to have little intention of paying for much of ... Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers’.
Oborne added: ‘I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?’
Tax Journal has invited Green’s Arcadia group to comment. Responding last year to critics of his appointment as head of a review of government spending, Green told the BBC: ‘My wife's not a tax exile, my family do not live in the UK ... We do pay all our tax in Britain. I think we have paid over the last five years some £300-400 million in taxes on profits that have been made on our company. I'm a UK taxpayer, I work here every week, we employ 45,000 people in the UK and we have got a £500 million payroll.’
One anonymous Telegraph reader responded: ‘I will tell you the difference, say, between Philip Green's billion pound offshore dividend and the looters ransacking the place: Green has actually done something for his wealth. He's taken risks, he's ventured capital, he's employed people and I'm pretty sure he has contributed financially ...’
But many readers described Oborne’s article as ‘brilliant’ or ‘excellent’.
Arcadia Group’s stores, which include Topshop and Miss Selfridge, continue to be targeted by protestors against tax avoidance, albeit on a much smaller scale than last December’s protests. Small groups claimed to have staged protests outside Topman and Topshop stores in Yorkshire last Saturday.
