An RBS scandal: haven’t we already seen this movie?

Outlook

Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters (Rex)

Another day, another Royal Bank of Scotland scandal. This time it concerns the bank’s previous tax bills – and how Harry Potter magicked a way to make hundreds of millions of pounds in potential payments vanish from RBS’s books, via that hardy perennial of tax avoidance: film finance.

Playing that game also reportedly got RBS a lot of chocolate out of Charlie’s factory, and saw it playing the Joker when Batman began driving a Trojan horse full of money out of the UK Exchequer.

There is a weary inevitability about the responses that have come from those connected to the story. RBS obeyed the rules at the time and doesn’t do these things any more. The film makers were able to bring films to the UK that otherwise would have been made elsewhere. HM Revenue & Customs treats all taxpayers the same and will demand the full amount, including interest and penalties, where it thinks tax has been avoided. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Frustrating? Very. But the problem here is this. Let’s say HMRC did go after RBS, which is nearly 80 per cent owned by the taxpayer. Just the investigations would cost a small fortune, and then there would be the inevitable fight over the conclusions as RBS’s name was dragged through the mud again. And if it finally yielded some money? In effect, that would be the state paying the state, while the process of getting RBS off that state’s books would be extended.

Meanwhile Fred Goodwin – aka Voldemort – and his lieutenants are enjoying retirements that, while not as comfortable as they might have hoped, still afford them a quality of life far beyond what 99.9 per cent of Britons could ever hope to achieve.

Another film/TV franchise, Star Trek, popularised the notion of the Kobayashi Maru, the no-win situation that its hero found a way around. But there are no Captain Kirks available to help out with this one.