Alexis Petridis 

If Arctic Monkeys must avoid tax, they should do it in style

Alexis Petridis: Rock stars should take a look at Robert Plant. He took time out at Led Zeppelin concerts to blame fans for his multimillionaire woes
  
  

Arctic Monkeys
Playing it straight … Arctic Monkeys have chosen accountants over real rock style. Photograph: Matt Baron/Bei/Rex Photograph: Matt Baron/Bei/Rex

And so it is revealed that yet more pop stars are involved in an aggressive tax-avoidance strategy. George Michael, Gary Barlow, Katie Melua and the four current members of Arctic Monkeys are among those said to have invested in the Liberty tax strategy, alongside Anne Robinson, Michael Caine and the delectable Paul Nicholson, a loan shark jailed indefinitely in 2009 for raping a client, and blackmailing and assaulting others. It sounds like quite the VIP area.

But, somehow, it is the rock stars who attract Lost in Showbiz's attention here. In truth, it is not merely their avoiding tax that it objects to although, it admits, the £1bn the Liberty investors attempted to shelter might have come in useful somewhere given, say, the welfare cuts that, according to Oxfam, have pushed 1.75 million of the UK's poorest families deeper into poverty. It is the absolute lack of style today's rock stars show when they're avoiding tax. If you're a rock star and you persist in avoiding tax, at least do it in the time-honoured way.

Don't sit around in an accountant's office discussing the tax relief available on the cost of buying a dividend in a subsidiary of an offshore parent company, like some kind of square. Go and live in a huge crumbing mansion in the south of France, with a vast coterie of hangers-on you can lord it over, like a ghastly deposed 18th-century monarch, and a drug dealer called something like Dave the Hat, whom you persist in referring to as a "mellow guy", despite substantial evidence that suggests Dave the Hat is a violent psychopath.

And, while you're there, behave at all times as if you're some kind of outlaw escaping The Man, who is relentlessly persecuting you because you're too brilliant and free-thinking and thus a terrible threat to the pathetic mores of bourgeois society, rather than, say, a bass player who is too greedy to pay his whack. Write some songs whining about being a tax exile, in the eye-popping belief that this is going to elicit sympathy from your fellow countrymen: yes, we're reduced to using a food bank, but at least we're not that poor guy who has had the inconvenience of relocating his life of non-stop luxury, drugs and shagging to Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Before you leave, don't skulk about secretly pouring money into a tax-avoidance scheme as if you're somehow embarrassed about your actions: make a big old song and dance about it, as though you're convinced it's you that has the moral upper hand.

Take a leaf out Robert Plant's book. He spent a significant proportion of time between songs at Led Zeppelin's 1975 Earls Court shows complaining wildly that "everyone" was leaving the country because of the fiscal policies of the then chancellor, Denis Healey, and admonishing the audience – then in the midst of an economic downturn brought about by a slump in house prices and a global stock market crash – for voting for Labour without first considering the effect their taxation plans might have on multimillionaire musicians.

You may scoff at the sheer, brazen, screw-you arrogance on display there, but it's worth noting that it seemed to go down pretty well with the audience, in marked contrast to, say, Mark Owen of Take That's quiet investment in the Icebreaker tax-avoidance scheme, which resulted in persons unknown scrawling the graffiti "FUCK OFF TAX EVADER" on the front of his south London home.

In short, Lost in Showbiz sees the Liberty tax strategy as evidence not merely of greed, but of a wider malaise in popular music. Without wishing to compound the woes of the musical wing of the investors, it offers them this message: You're supposed to be a rock star, a job that brings with it certain responsibilities codified by your forebears. Start doing your job properly or I'm afraid we're going to have to advertise your position.

 

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