Death and Taxes

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who first coined the phrase that there are no certainties in life, except Death and Taxes. To be honest, I think he missed out on a couple. Jose Mourinho complaining about the referee after Man United loses is a certainty as is the fact that a man will never have the last word in an argument. Even when he thinks he had the last word, the truth is that he’s only had the first word in the next argument.

I mention Death and Taxes because it’s the name of the play I’m currently rehearsing. After a six year gap I’m taking to the stage again, to play a balding, fat, middle aged egomaniac. So I won’t even have to act.

But the title did get me thinking. Not about death, there is time enough for that later. No, I’ve been thinking about taxes and why nobody wants to pay them.  My first job was in a small Accountancy practice in Ireland. It became clear to me early on that most clients engaged us to minimise or avoid paying tax altogether. To my eternal shame, I watched various shady activities occur and said nothing. I would have been treated as a fool if I did as the culture in the office was clear. Tax was evil and anyone who could get away with not paying it was just being sensible.

This was and is a particular problem in Ireland. Taxes were originally introduced by the English and not paying them became a point of honour and a mark of rebellion. I also think that in a Catholic country, the portrayal of tax collectors in the bible doesn’t help. The upshot of course of the self-employed and farmers not paying their fair share is that tax rates have to go up to make up for the shortfall. And this encourages even more people to avoid tax.

I have to admit that I have bought into this group think over the years. Most of my career has been spent in the off shore Funds industry, which for all its regulation, is essentially a mechanism for rich people to hide their ill-gotten gains beyond the clutches of their local tax collectors. But we acted like Walt in Breaking Bad. He just made the Meth. What people chose to do with it was their business. We worked out how much money people made on their investments. Whether they chose to pay tax or not on this was none of our business.

I should also point out that while I was working in Edinburgh, I did so through my own limited company. While I didn’t do anything illegal, I did make good use of the liberal rules around expense claims and distributions.

But in general, I’m a tax compliant soul. I’ve paid taxes in a number of countries. Enough to buy the British a Chieftain tank. Enough to pay the generous pension of an Irish politician. Enough to buy a new Mercedes for the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and enough to buy all the razor wire for Australia’s off-shore detention centres. But I’ve also paid for lots of good things in those countries and that’s the point. We don’t get to choose what our tax is spent on. We just get to vote for the people who will spend it.

I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet people over the years who don’t share this view. They hold what I would charitably call right wing opinions, or if I was uncharitable, individualism bordering on fascism. These people believe in only the strong surviving. That those who can should pay for private hospitals and schools and look after old people within our own family structures. And tough luck if you can’t afford this.

Taxes and the distribution of resources that results are the price the well-off pay for an orderly society. You need to keep a lid on the furnace of resentment that is fanned by capitalism. The Scandinavian countries understand this best and they recognise that this leads to a better quality of life for everyone. Most western countries do just enough to keep in the lid on things. Occasionally, it bubbles over and the masses take to the streets in search of a fight with the police or to pinch a television from the local electrical store. 

And this brings me to Apple. Many people here in New Zealand are amazed that the Irish government is refusing to take the billions that Apple have been ordered to pay. They are also amazed that Ireland and Apple have gotten away with this scam for so long. The defence that both parties give is that it is legal. This may well be the case. It’s also legal for a sixty year old to marry a fourteen year old in some parts of Asia. It’s legal in America to execute a mentally retarded fifteen year old.

But none of these things are moral and ethical and I wonder why nobody has called out Apple or the other global companies on this issue. Apple sell their phones to people who can read because they have been educated by tax payer money. Their shops are protected by tax payer funded police and their intellectual property rights are protected by the laws and legal systems in countries that are paid for by tax payers.

We pay tax because we benefit from the larger settled society that this creates. Apple benefits from resources paid for by the taxes of others but chooses to look at their shoes when the collection plate comes their ways.

And that’s why I’ll be discarding all the Apple products I own. In truth, this amounts to a single nine year old IPod, which has amazed me in its longevity but makes me look like a luddite on the train. Henceforth I will listen to music and podcasts on my phone, just as soon as I’ve done some research on Samsung’s tax payments.

 

Kiwi Experience

I’m walking up Queen Street on a Tuesday morning in August. Winter has come to Auckland with a bang and the rain is sweeping in horizontally while a wind that found its energy in the Antarctic is finding its way into every gap in my clothing.

Winter came as a bit of a shock to me.  I had been seduced by the story that Auckland sits on the same latitude as Southern Spain. Then I remembered that no one in their right mind would visit that corner of the Iberian Peninsula in January.

I came to the junction with Shortland Street and noticed a gaggle of millennials huddling under a canopy from the rain. Their stylish clothing and backpacks marked them out as Europeans tourists and I wondered why they had chosen to visit New Zealand when the weather is at its foulest. Then I remembered that most of them will be on a ‘gap’ year. That period between University and the real world, when in return for mediocre grades, their parents hand over a wedge of cash and tell their offspring to go off and discover themselves.

 Most will be disappointed with the discovery, which will highlight their inability to drink as much as they thought they could and prove that they are just as unattractive to the opposite sex abroad as they are at home.

But for some, they will realise a joy of travel, of meeting new people and trying new things and that feeling will never leave them.

Logistically, this group probably worked all last summer on the fruit farms of Queensland, travelled around Australia in autumn and then pitched up in New Zealand as the winter winds start to pick up speed. They should have done it the other way round, of course. Come to New Zealand in autumn and then visit Northern Australia in winter, when the humidity has passed and the temperatures are in the high twenties.  But the young have to learn to make their own mistakes.

As I was passing them, a large green bus pulled up and the backpackers scurried forward and formed an orderly queue. “Kiwi Experience” was painted on the side and I was transported back more than twenty years to January 1996 when I first came to New Zealand and boarded that same bus. Well not the same one exactly. The company has obviously made a lot of money since then and invested it in a modern fleet. Back in my day they were driving buses that looked like they had been rescued from the Solomon Islands after the Japanese abandoned the place in 1945.

I started my adventure in Christchurch and spent a month travelling around the South Island. I arrived at the pickup point on a chilly Monday morning, clutching my pristine copy of “Lonely Planet’s Guide to New Zealand 1996”. I cast a wary eye over my fellow travellers. I had turned thirty that year and noticed that I was almost ten years older than anyone else, apart from the bus driver. I contented myself in the knowledge that at least I was paying for my own trip.

They were all carrying the same book but theirs were dog eared and well thumbed. Most had already travelled around the North Island and so while I was the oldest on the bus, I was also the least experienced in the mysteries of back packing.

I learned later that afternoon, when we pulled into a hostel in Kaikoura, that is recommended that you bring a sleeping bag when staying in shared accommodation. Luckily, Kaikoura had a number of shops geared for this sort of emergency. I purchased an overpriced bag and waltzed back to the hostel with the air of somebody who had researched sleeping bag options and had made a conscious decision to wait until visiting that shop in that town before buying one.

I went on to have one of the best months of my life and still have the scars to show for it. When the old green bus pulled back into Christchurch four weeks later, I said goodbye to the Germans, Danes and English people that had shared my journey. I kept a journal and the back page is full of messages from those fellow travellers. One message, from a German friend I shared a few drinks with, stands out.

“To the only man I know who thinks beer is more important than oxygen.”

That kind of summed up that whole trip.

It was on that trip that the first seed was planted. I came back to New Zealand many times since before finally achieving my dream of living here.

I gathered my scarf tighter as I passed by the group on Queen Street and made my way to work. I didn’t envy those backpackers. I didn’t pang to join them. Those bus trips are for younger people and even at thirty; I was already pushing the envelope. I admired them and wished them well and liked the thought that they would discover the majesty of New Zealand and would bore their friends back in Dresden or Leeds with endless photos of waterfalls and snow-capped mountains on their Facebook page.

Every generation gets to discover the world for themselves and to wrap themselves in that delusion that they are first to see that hidden beach or rare bird. These kids were no different to my fellow travellers back in 1996. Although I noticed that none of them were carrying a copy of “Lonely Planet’s Guide to New Zealand 2016”. No doubt that’s all online these days and they can find it all on their hand held electronic devices. I had a new CD Walkman with me on my travels in 1996 and thought I was surfing on the cutting edge of technology.

I wish them all safe travel and hope that they enjoy themselves as much as I did. I will always have my memories and the smug satisfaction that I started my trip in January and everywhere, even New Zealand, looks better in the sun.