Published in The Adelaide Advertiser Wednesday 13.4.16. 2nd last letter.
Reminding people that religions pay no tax and Calvinism is the origin of capitalism.
Dear Letters Editor,
Off-shore tax havens and bank skulduggery are creating more public ire.
Money has always been the great ‘lubricant’ — oiling the wheels of big business or greasing palms of the corrupt. Release of the Panama Papers provides fresh insights into how barrel loads of the stuff has been siphoned off for decades by the mega-rich.
Historically, greed has been a vice — covetousness being one of the Seven Deadly Sins. And today brazen wealth faces growing public anger — not due to the pejorative jibe of “envy”, but simply because these off-shore havens allow the super-wealthy to pay no tax.
Mossack Fonseca is just one company (worldwide) that’s complicit in hiding vast fortunes — money that avoids billions in tax for basic essentials like national infrastructure, hospitals and education. It’s a massive revenue shortfall that has to be filled by honest tax-paying workers.
Politicians have done nothing. If they don’t have off-shore tax havens themselves they certainly have the tax-limiting advantages of family trusts, negative gearing and a variety of manipulative schemes by which they evade their social responsibilities.
And the alleged voice of the oppressed — the churches — remain mute too. That’s due simply to the fact that they pay no tax either! It’s a figure reliably estimated at over $20b per year.
What is even more remarkable is that it was Protestantism — and Calvinism in particular — that lifted the embargo on “avarice and usury”.
They allowed a mythical Jesus and the temple money-lenders to be usurped by global banking and the captains of industry — and capitalism has now mushroomed into corporate and personal greed unprecedented in world history.
Brian Morris
Director, Plain Reason
Plain Reason: Promoting science, reason and critical thinking.