I can forgive U2 singer Bono for tax dodge but not his hypocrisy — after star was exposed in the Paradise Papers data leak
IF the greatest pop music is the most personal, then Bono’s next U2 album should be a cracker.
He will no doubt write about something close to his heart — avoiding tax.
As always, the humble Irishman will be keeping it real by telling a story we can all relate to.
It’s about an ordinary guy, born Paul Hewson, best friend of popes, prime ministers and presidents, and his heroic mission to save the world and his near-billion dollar fortune by sheltering it in ingenious offshore accounting schemes including a shopping centre in Lithuania, bought via low-tax Malta.
Bono is one of the celebrities exposed in the Paradise Papers data leak. Like last year’s Panama Papers, it involves the release of private documents detailing some of the tax avoidance schemes used by the rich and powerful.
In the preachy pop bore’s case, it really couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.
For some of those named, I feel rather sorry. The Queen, for example.
It’s hardly her fault if her clever advisers want to protect her investments: Tax avoidance is not the same as tax evasion and is perfectly legal.
But for people like Bono I have no sympathy whatsoever.
Unlike our Queen, who keeps her politics and her private thoughts to herself, he never tires of lecturing us mere peasants on how to live our lives.
I can forgive Bono’s greed: I’m sure we’d all behave the same if we earned that much and could afford a fancy accountant. What I can’t forgive is his outrageous hypocrisy.
Bono is forever using emotional blackmail to make starstruck governments spend our money on his worthy causes. Through his non-profit ONE campaign, he advocates more aid to help impoverished people in the Third World. He also wants us, the taxpayers of the West, to eradicate Aids, cancel developing world debts and end poverty.
“The countries of Africa are extremely rich in resources but why are they poor?” he told the Clinton Global Initiative in New York in 2013.
One reason, he says, is that greedy companies like Exxon Mobil aren’t paying their proper share of tax locally — pretty rich from a man who in 2006 moved some of U2’s operations from low-tax Ireland to the even lower-tax Netherlands.
In 2008, he was rich enough to splurge £18million on a yacht. One of his investment schemes, Elevation Partners, owns a chunk of Facebook — a company so adept at tax avoidance you could write an album’s worth of crusading anthems about it.
Ditto Apple, whose tax-dodging antics Bono was happy to overlook when it earned U2 shedloads for the use of their song Vertigo on an iPod ad. Not to mention partnering with it on that infamous forced giveaway of Songs Of Innocence.
He’s a self-proclaimed philanthropist, conservatively estimated at being worth £531million. So why won’t he put his money where his opinionated mouth is?
Pause for my favourite Bono joke. Bono is at a concert and starts slowly, rhythmically clapping his hands. “Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies,” he says, clapping away. Then someone in the audience pipes up: “Well stop f***ing clapping, then.”
This isn’t the first time celebrities have been caught trying to avoid taxes and it won’t be the last.
Everyone seems to be at it, even minor players like Mrs Brown’s Boys actors Patrick Houlihan, Fiona Delany and Martin Delany — who, funneled £2million into a tax avoidance scheme. Sometimes these schemes work. Sometimes they come horribly unstuck.
Like the 2LLP scheme ruled inadmissible by HMRC last year, which ended up costing celebrities including David Beckham and Ant and Dec millions.
Then there is Gary Barlow — that’s Gary Barlow OBE, elevated to near National Treasure status for all the wonderful work he does for charidee.
But behind the scenes, it emerged in 2014, the sanctimonious singer and his Take That bandmates were making like bandits with tax avoidance schemes.
Another singer, Katie Melua, ploughed £850,000 into the same scheme as Barlow. She did this just after being nominated for nominated for Christian Aid’s Tax Superhero award, having boasted: “I pay nearly half of what comes to me in taxes.” She has denied tax avoidance after paying back cash to HMRC.
And did you hear the one about Jimmy Carr? Of course you did. The darling of the comedy circuit. Oh, how we all laughed when it emerged he had tucked away at least £3.3million in a Jersey-based tax avoidance scheme.
With luck, other dreadful celebrities thinking of doing the same thing will learn a lesson from this scandal.
I just pray it’s the right one.
And that is, if you enter into a tax avoidance scheme, don’t ever again presume to lecture us again.
