Comedy is Taxing

"I'm spending a year dead, for tax purposes" - Douglas Adams

Well, this is a little cat amongst the pigeons.  Jimmy Carr is a tax dodger.  The man that has lampooned and roasted 'fat cat' bankers, the rich, the poor and everyone in between has been critiscised for being a hypocrite.

You'd have thought it was completely cut and dry.

It's not. I'm saying that Jimmy Carr is completely and totally in the right.  And, while writing, so is everyone else that's taking advantage of this loophole, including (allegedly) most of Take That.

Me defending Take That?  What the fuck??!

To me it's simple.  What Carr has done is legal. It's totally above board, and cleared by HMRC.  The problem lays in the fact that it IS legal.  Being frank, if I could pay less tax by doing something that was all above board, I'd be an idiot not to!  We all would. 

Is it wrong, morally?  Perhaps, as it seems like it's something that only benefits the rich, but in his position, how could you not do it?

Carr has come out now and apologised and said he's not doing it anymore, to his credit, but I for one wouldn't have complained if he'd said, "balls to the lot of you, I've done nothing wrong".  Because he'd be right.

If the loophole wasn't there, it wouldn't be an issue.  So don't hate the player, hate the game.