{"id":16222,"date":"2012-06-28T15:38:53","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T14:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=16222"},"modified":"2012-06-28T15:38:53","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T14:38:53","slug":"bono-isnt-innocent-of-tax-avoidance-because-what-he-does-is-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/06\/28\/bono-isnt-innocent-of-tax-avoidance-because-what-he-does-is-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"Bono isn’t innocent of tax avoidance because what he does is legal"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was an almost amusing artcile in the Irish Times<\/a> this week on Bono, as seen through the eyes of the charity he founded - One.<\/p>\n

As the article noted:<\/p>\n

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Jamie Drummond of the anti-poverty campaign, One, has defended U2 singer Bono\u2019s tax arrangements, saying they are \u201cperfectly legal\u201d.<\/p>\n

U2 faced severe criticism and charges of hypocrisy in 2006 when they moved part of their business arrangements to the Netherlands to avoid paying tax on royalties in Ireland following the cap which was put on the artists\u2019 exemption scheme in Ireland in late 2005.<\/p>\n

The criticism has been particularly focused on Bono, who has been a vocal advocate for developed countries to increase their official development assistance to poorer countries.<\/p>\n

In addition, Bob Geldof, another advocate for the One campaign, has been criticised for availing of non-domiciled tax status in the UK to avoid paying large sums on overseas earnings.<\/p>\n

Mr Drummond said both men were \u201cnot engaged in tax avoidance as I understand it. They are engaged in perfectly legal matters.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jamie is very confused. \u00a0Tax avoidance is by\u00a0definition not illegal, even if its legality is sometimes hard to prove. And no one has ever suggested they've ever done anything illegal - which would be evasion, with which Jamie is (I hope) getting confused.<\/p>\n

What we've questioned is their moral judgement in engaging in practices that use mechanisms such as tax havens that have been\u00a0exploited\u00a0to strip more than \u00a3100 billion a year from developing countries.<\/p>\n

The charge is hypocrisy: failing to walk the talk even when the error was pointed out. Jimmy Carr had the courage to say sorry. Now it's time for Bono and Geldof to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was an almost amusing artcile in the Irish Times this week on Bono, as seen through the eyes of the charity he founded –
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}