Poor Mr Cameron.

Unaccustomed as I am to any conciliatory feeling towards this Conservative government I’m feeling a slight pity for Cameron. Anyone with a six figure taxable asset or earnings will via their accountant be introduced to a keen tax advisor who will open up a market stall of commodities to meet your every tax saving need rather like a door-to-door salesman shows loo brushes and dishcloths. Both accountant and advisor will assume you are an intelligent man of the world who will wish to minimise your tax bill by any means possible. In the face of this paradigm that paying tax is more immoral and plain stupid than avoiding paying tax, all legal of course, one chooses a nailbrush and two ironing board covers. A case in point. Said advisor suggests assigning said asset to a third party that resides in a foreign land unaccustomed to the ways of income tax because it only has three residents and a dog. You no longer own the asset but you do own the third party that does own it, and as no one knows this connection because it was written on a piece of paper subsequently eaten by the dog it all moves into the realms of the intangible. Nowhere in this whole process is there any thought for morality. It’s as if paying tax would be akin to putting your money on a bonfire and everyone knows that’s just silly. This is the environment Cameron, Osborne and the rest of the Bullingdon Club were brought up in but since the furore about corporations ‘legally’ avoiding UK tax the condemnation has moved to morality, an aspect of tax avoidance previously considered unimportant. So now the Panamanian pandemonium has the morals of wealthy individuals in its headlights and poor Mr Cameron has his own familial immorality to consider.