Downing Street insists that David Cameron’s tax affairs are “a private matter” (The hidden deals that helped Cameron’s father avoid paying UK tax,5 April). This is very much a British upper-lesson way of looking at things, with their earnings being up there with their sexual orientations and religious beliefs, and as things strictly between them and their gods. To ask an English gentleman or lady in public what he or she earns is “bad form” at best.
In fact,how you earn your lucre is of very mighty public relevance. Money isnt earned in a vacuum, after all, or by your own unaided efforts,but is facilitated by the opportunities and rules that the political society around you provides. What anyone earns is therefore of valid interest in a democratic society. That is especially so when private profit can occupy an impact on the more general capable, as is clearly the case when taxes that could be spent on new schools and hospitals are spirited away in “tax havens” – especially when responsibility for those havens lies with the British Foreign Office ultimately. So of course we should all be able to see their tax returns, and as Jeremy Corbyn has already volunteered.
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Source: theguardian.com