So after all the hype, how did Panorama's Tax, Lies and Videotape pan out?
Well, yes, Richard Brooks of Private Eye was a key figure in the programme, but the programme wasn't by any means an out-and-out piece of campaigning journalism.
Its central argument was that there's an uneasy tension between the government stated desire that everyone should pay their fair share of tax and the government's hope for Britain to remain an attractive place for large businesses to invest in. Do UK taxpayers lose out if foreign companies avoid paying their 'fair share' of tax?
The programme did rather assume that all tax avoidance is a bad thing, ignoring the fact that most of us 'little people' engage in some form of it - and are, indeed, encouraged to do so by the government (ISAs, pensions, etc).
Surely not all tax avoidance by 'big businesses' is wrong either, if it's legal. And any tax adviser worth his salt (maybe even the poor HMRC chap who was made to look shifty by the programme's use of fidgety undercover filming) is surely only doing his job if he advises a company - even a multinational company - how to pay the absolute minimum in tax that it is legally obliged to pay, so that it can continue to thrive as best it can. A legal loophole is a legal loophole after all.
