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Tax avoidance: is Jimmy Carr's comedy career over?
If we see Carr on 10 O'Clock Live again the hypocrisy will be insufferable, says one critic
JIMMY CARR has had a tough week. Plastered across the front of The Times yesterday, the comedian was accused of using a tax avoidance scheme to shelter £3.3m a year from the taxman.
His reps have been quick to point out that he has done nothing illegal by channelling his earnings through a Jersey-based scheme called K2 that returns the money to him via a non-taxable loan.
But, legal or not, paying as little as one per cent income tax has been described as "morally repugnant" by David Gauke, the exchequer secretary to the Treasury with responsibility for HMRC. While Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, yesterday said tax avoiders are the "moral equivalent of benefits cheats".
A number of fans defended Carr's morality on Twitter, claiming others would do the same if they could and criticising the high rates of tax in the UK. Comedian John Bishop quipped that Carr's finances are like his jokes – "every comedian in the country read it and said I wish I thought of that!"
Even Carr himself managed to make light of the situation at a gig in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, last night, saying: "When the Murdochs are questioning your morality, you know you're in trouble." After an audience member shouted: "You don't pay tax", he replied: "I pay what I have to and not a penny more."
But, as news of Carr's tax avoidance went viral, so too did links to a sketch he performed on satirical comedy 10 O'Clock Live in which he plays a female Barclays bank clerk. Donning a blonde wig he imparts advice on tax avoidance, following news reports alleging that the bank had been avoiding tax.
"Why don't you apply for the Barclays one per cent tax scam?" Carr jokes. "You will need the world's biggest, most aggressive team of blood-hungry amoral tax lawyers. If you meet the criteria, you'll pay one per cent tax, like Barclays do."
Lampooning fat cat bankers while employing tax avoidance measures of exactly the same sort has attracted accusations that he is a hypocrite – a charge that is likely to pose more danger to his career as a satirical comedian than accusations of immorality made by politicians.
As Tim Stanley writes in The Daily Telegraph today, "a lot of the anger isn't really about tax avoidance. It's about hypocrisy".
James Delingpole, another Telegraph blogger, agrees. Delingpole suggests that Carr's "credibility is toast" and could not expect his "sixth-form spray-on Lefty mates" to take him seriously ever again. One liberal blogger confirms: "If we see Carr on 10 O'Clock Live again the hypocrisy will be insufferable."
Even fellow comedian Frankie Boyle tweeted: "It's OK to avoid tax providing every time you do a joke about a town being s*** you add 'partly down to me I'm afraid' under your breath."
However, if Carr's comedy career does end up in ruins, political blogger Will Parbury has a useful suggestion to keep him in the showbiz circle – "the skill with which Jimmy Carr can make his money disappear when it gets near HMRC points to a second career as a magician".
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K3?
He's done nothing illegal it's just sour grapes from Cameron and cronies that they can't do it. I pay 0% tax LEGALLY , so does that make me worse than benefits cheats ?
yes
Yes, it does, if not worse.
All tax avoidance is wrong.
Jimmy Carr, your a scrapper.
Stop buying from anyone or any company who think it's right.
HMRC are the worst culprit though. There should be no tax loopholes. They know about them and do nothing. That's criminal.
Is
paying tax a moral issue?
“No, not
at all, why should it be? Tax, is a system under which the Government, (which
is largely composed of scoundrels), forces honest people to hand over large
sums of money under the threat of imprisonment, and I really don’t think that
there’s anything wrong in trying all legal methods to pay as little of it as
possible”.
“I
really don’t see that there is a moral issue over this and it seems to me to be
very peculiar that the Government has started to talk about immoral and amoral
tax avoidance. In a society with the rule
of law, there will be legal ways of avoiding paying tax – what’s immoral about
that?”
“If the
Government were so tremendously virtuous that it could guarantee to spend our
money better than we could spend it ourselves, then maybe it would be so. Most of the things that we hope that the
Government will do with our money are thing it fails at: The schools are rotten, the Police don’t
police, the criminal justice system is made of cardboard, the armed forces have
either been sunk, or disbanded….
“I can’t
think of anything I’d want the Government to do with my money that it
does. I could provide a better state
with the bits of income that are left to me after they’ve taken the rest of it
away. I really don’t see that there’s a
moral issue here.” - Peter Hitchens, Shooting from the hip as always! Any Questions, 23 06 2012.
Not much to disagree with
NO! Cameron has saved him. The emphasis is now on who else is dodging the tax man and of course on Cameron for condemning one man and making no comment on his friends and financial donors to the party. What a lying hypocrite Cameron is. Surly a man running this country should have more common sense than he displays. But there the comments he makes and the reasurances he gives us he must take the rest of the nation to be as big a fools as he is. What will set the British people against him more than his Victorian policies will be the fact that he is not giving us credit for any intelligence to see right through him, he is classing us as stupid as himself. No wonder he needs advisers!!
Although I agree with your comments about the government I cannot agree that it is alright to cheat the system. Yes much of our money is wasted by the government and yes the government are a load of frauds, cheats and liars and you can add to that hypocrites. But nevertheless we do need to be honest about our tax, maybe if the wealthiest were not allowed to get away with not paying their dues those of us less well off would not have to face such a large tax bill. It is not just income tax and insurance, we go on paying tax in almost everything we buy, over 80% on fuel, 20% on purchases of essential items like clothing etc. etc.
Absolutely YES! Of course you are worse that benefits cheats please do not try and salve your concience by picking on those much worse off than yourself. I do not condone benefits cheats but nevertheless they do not have independant means. For the rest of us less well off if the the wealthy had any sort of concience they would pay their dues and maybe those of us in low paid jobs making the rich, richer we would not face such a colossal tax bill. Why do you think Cameron's cronies can't do it, it is coming out now through Cameron's big mouth that there are many of his cronies and party donars that are doing it. Incidently do you contribute to any charities? Jimmy Carr gives much of his money away to a large number of charities.
Peter is not suggesting that anyone cheats the system. He says: "
I really don’t think that there’s anything wrong in trying all legal methods to pay as little of it as possible”.