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.