Emily Parker spoke with Andy Flannagan about the most unlikely of campaigns.



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God knows us better than we know ourselves. There's a reason that God instituted those principles for the children of Israel. He knew that we are innately selfish. Left to our own devices, we will take selfish options and power and wealth will accumulate to the powerful and the wealthy.

You can't just rely on our own charity, actually we do need rhythms of giving and taxation is one of those rhythms. That's why we feel like patriots pay tax. Patriots are part of that system. We are proud to pay taxes. We're keen to pay taxes, because it's a way of dethroning mammon, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently said.

Emily: You also mention corporate tax evasion in the video. What is that and where is it happening?

Patriots Pay Tax

Andy: There are many documented cases. I'd encourage people to Google 'Corporate Tax Evasion' and very quickly there are lots of examples that pop up.

Recently there was the story of Café Nero. The coffee chain haven't paid any tax to the British Government since 2007, because of clever tax accountancy. They claim that their company is not actually based here, that it's based somewhere else, in a tax haven. They claim that their actual company here hasn't made any profit since 2007, therefore they don't have to pay any tax.

There are many clever ways to avoid paying tax if you're a corporation. They have very well paid tax departments to make sure that they don't pay. Sadly we don't have the resource in the Government's tax receiving body, the HMRC, to go after them and be smarter than these folks. Therefore we're losing millions of pounds.

If you go to the website, its www.christiansontheleft.org.uk/patriotspaytax or go to the video on YouTube, you'll see a link to sign our e-petition to say that we want a properly funded department at HMRC that can go after these folks who are avoiding paying the taxes.

If you've got the privilege of doing business in the UK, then you should have the responsibility of paying for that privilege; of being able to both use British labour and sell to British consumers, you should be paying British taxes.

Emily: What difference would this properly funded department make?

Andy: The tax justice network has done a lot of work on this and they've estimated that every £1 that we invested in this department would claim £10 back. So very quickly it wouldn't just pay for itself, it would ten times pay for itself. Because the amount of money out there, estimates are anything up to 119 billion pounds that the company is losing per year in lost tax money. You can compare that to the money that people make a huge song and dance about, that people say is lost through welfare. This pales in comparison to the sums we are talking about.

Emily: Is this happening anywhere else in the world?

Andy: Absolutely, but one of the most painful things about Brexit, is that the European Union work together between different companies and are very effective in calling people to account. There's a very famous case with Apple being taken to court. Countries across the EU are getting very serious about this, because if you come together as different companies to work on it, then the corporations involved have nowhere to run and hide. So some very effective work has been done by the European Union especially. It's one of the painful reasons that I am very sad about Brexit happening.

Emily: How can people find out more about all of this?

Andy: Go to YouTube or you can go on the website www.christiansontheleft.org.ukM. You'll see it on the front page there.

You can sign the e-petition and read some more of the background and research and policy work and also some of the theological work, explaining why we think it's a really biblical thing to be paying our taxes, paying our fair share and contributing to our society in that way. CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.