James Moore: HSBC’s scandal spotlights the inertia of HMRC

Outlook

While the latest revelations about the work HSBC’s Swiss private bank has being doing for wealthy tax cheats have ignited something of a firestorm, the basic elements of the story have actually been known about for years.

That is not to denigrate the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, Le Monde, the BBC and others.

It is rather important that this dirty laundry is aired and that the extent to which these people have been treating the rest of us like chumps is made clear. But the real takeaway from the latest revelations is that they have basically got away with having done so.

HM Revenue & Customs might have piously declared that it has recovered some money from some of them. But why has only one person been charged? And why hasn’t HSBC itself been charged with anything in the UK, when others have been only too keen to bring the hammer down?

If you, like me, have been in receipt of one of those aggressive letters demanding to know why you’ve forgotten to pay a few quid that the taxman has calculated that you should have handed over, you’re quite entitled to raise the question.

Because there are actually two scandals here. The first is the facilitation of tax avoidance, and perhaps evasion, by and for wealthy individuals on an industrial scale. The second is the quiescence of the UK authorities when confronted with it.