When Bono’s not saving the world, he is saving on taxes! The irritating Irish multi-millionaire frontman of global pseudo-rock poseurs U2 gleefully tours the world playing music, pontificating on poverty, and wearing silly sunglasses. But while he rakes in cash with one hand, not just from his music but also from shrewd investments such as Facebook shares, he guides it to tax havens with the other. “Did I disappoint you? Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?”Reuters
When Bono’s not saving the world, he is saving on taxes! The irritating Irish multi-millionaire frontman of global pseudo-rock poseurs U2 gleefully tours the world playing music, pontificating on poverty, and wearing silly sunglasses. But while he rakes in cash with one hand, not just from his music but also from shrewd investments such as Facebook shares, he guides it to tax havens with the other. “Did I disappoint you? Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?”ReutersTell us the one about Barclays’ tax avoidance again, Jimmy! Oh, you’ve been avoi… Oh. How embarrassing. Jimmy and his accountants managed to put his earnings through an intricate offshore scheme that saw him pay around 1 percent of tax on his millions. Hilarious!ReutersThis is HMRC to David Bowie, please don’t leave the UK and pay your bloody taxes. Or something like that. Bowie fled the UK’s tax system in the seventies to escape the high tax rate of 83 percent. He went to Switzerland and became a tax exile, helping him to amass an estimated £500m fortune.ReutersLike Bowie The Rolling Stones don’t get no taxation. Crusty rockers Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts channel much of their earnings through a Dutch company in order to benefit from lucrative tax laws that allow for low rates on royalties and intellectual property.Reuters"I guess now it's time for me to give up," belts out Gary Barlow in the opening line from the Take That hit Back for Good. Little did we know he was talking about paying tax. Barlow, along with fellow Take That tax avoidance aficionados Howard Donald and Mark Owen, put their cash through a music industry investment scheme called Icebreaker LLP, which channels its funds offshore and allows for limited tax liabilities.ReutersPerhaps Terry Venables, the former England manager and footballing legend, has a musical background that we don’t know about, because like Take That he puts cash through the Icebreaker investment scheme.ReutersOlympic silver medallist and BBC athletics pundit Colin Jackson has leaped over HMRC’s hurdles (groan) and is another investor in the Icebreaker scheme.ReutersThis tax dodger only pays tax voluntarily, which is why she volunteered not to pay £20m inheritance tax on her mother’s estate after she died in 2002. Not only does the taxpayer fund this royal rip off, but she only pays tax as and when she chooses. According to her website: “The Queen pays tax. “In 1992, The Queen volunteered to pay income tax and capital gains tax, and since 1993 her personal income has been taxable as for any other taxpayer. “The Queen has always been subject to Value Added Tax and pays local rates on a voluntary basis.” However seeing as the public is not allowed to see her finances, there is no way of scrutinising these claims.Reuters
It isn't just the comedian Jimmy Carr who made a "terrible error of judgment", or a canny accounting judgment to take another perspective, over his finances.
A whole host of celebrities are avoiding tax on their vast fortunes.
"I met with a financial adviser and he said to me 'Do you want to pay less tax? It's totally legal.' I said yes," Carr grovelled.
"I now realise I've made a terrible error of judgment."
From sports personalities to rock stars, some celebrities just don't want their money siphoned off by the state.
David Cameron said Carr's tax avoidance was "morally wrong", while others said they would do the same if they had the chance.
So who else lives in Cameron's tax morality vacuum, apart from, so it would seem, half the Conservative Party's donors?
International Business Times UK looks at some of the well known celebrities who tinker with their tax arrangements in avoidance schemes that cost the Treasury billions a year in lost revenues.
