I’m in Piccadilly Circus, the worst meeting point in Britain. But even the throngs of tourists armed with selfie sticks aren’t enough to obscure tour guides Natasha Adams and Tom Barns: they’re sporting bowler hats and huge red-and-white umbrellas, and handing out badges that read “I support the tax-dodging bill”.
The pair are my guides for one of ActionAid’s monthly “tax justice walking tours” of Mayfair, set up as a fun way to highlight how big businesses sidestep tax. I’m here to find out more, because, if we’ve learned anything from last week’s revelations about HSBC in Switzerland, it’s that nothing is more certain than death and tax avoidance.
Adams and Barns came up with the idea after Barns went on one of the Occupy tours, tracing the history of the financial crisis.
“When I did the research, I found quite quickly that it would work, because so many of the tax-dodgers we’d exposed were based in this small geographical area,” says Adams. “We want to develop people’s understanding of tax-dodging and how it works, and also encourage people: there’s already brilliant progress being made in the UK and internationally, and there is something people can do about it.”
Shouting over the London hullabaloo, Adams and Barns guide us past the swanky hotels and posh shops of Mayfair, pausing in front of various relevant buildings. In Jones Street, we get a lesson in profit-shifting: Starbucks, we’re reminded, famously “made a mocha-ry of the British tax system” by claiming not to have made a profit in the UK since opening in 1998.
There are usually around 20 attendees, but on this freezing February evening it’s closer to a dozen. “To begin with, it was mostly our supporters and NGO types who came on the tour, but listed on TimeOut it’s much more of a mixed bag.” There are tourists, and a housewife from Buckinghamshire; on the last tour, they were joined by an ex-employee of a government tax department.
The tour pauses regularly for questions. One attendee asks what it takes to dodge tax – is it simply a lack of moral fibre? That helps, she’s told, but the real ticket to dodging tax is simple: “There are a lot of loopholes: it’s whether you can afford to pay accountants to find them for you.” It’s a grim reality to face, but the tour ends on an upbeat note as we gather near Bond Street: Adams and Barns hand out “action packs”, encouraging attendees to learn more and “get involved in the movement”.
