Jersey’s wealthiest to pay even less tax – and the BBC applauds | Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the men who stole the world | A book by Nicholas Shaxson

Jersey’s wealthiest to pay even less tax – and the BBC applauds

Posted by: Nick Shaxson in: Thoughts

From BBC Jersey:

“The rate of tax paid by some of the wealthiest people in Jersey will be going down.”

See the BBC story for details; I discussed this particular perk for the world’s wealthy in great detail in Treasure Islands (p240 of the UK edition, if you’re interested. And I cited numerous Jersey dissidents criticising this kind of thing. For example:

“Jersey has the social structure of a Hilton hotel,’ explained Jerry Dorey, a Jersey senator: ‘a collection of alienated individuals who are just here to make money.’ “

Or this one:

‘I pay a quarter in tax terms of what the guy who collects my bins does. I play golf all day while he probably can’t even afford to pay for the house he lives in. Living in Jersey is like that: if you’ve got the money, you get the cream’.

The BBC report follows just a month after this story:

“A fortnight after the Jersey government put GST (the Jersey form of VAT) up to 5%, hitting the poorest, the Jersey Council of Ministers have decided not to increase social security charges for those earning more than £44232 per annum.”

The latest BBC Jersey about tax-cutting for the richest is, true to form, entirely biased. Not a word of criticism from any of the (many) who would oppose such a lowering of the tax rates on Jersey’s expatriate rich, helping them free-ride on the backs of others, elsewhere. No, BBC Jersey appears to love it.

The last sentence of the story is a quote from Treasury and Resources Minister Philip Ozouf:

“People who want to invest in our island are welcome and we need to do everything we can to let them know that Jersey is open for business.”

That looks to me like applause. Not direct applause: but any balanced story would quote a dissident, or at least leave the facts to speak for themselves. If you don’t believe that BBC Jersey is routinely biased in favour of tax havenry, ask any Jersey dissident, of which there are many.

Why doesn’t the BBC rein in BBC Jersey? Is the BBC, more generally, scared of tax havens?

via treasureislands.org