Therefore, moving on, please read this for yourself, out loud, adopting a voice half-way between the one David used here and this one. Or, if you don't have the time to carry out this basic research, aim for quite posh but thoroughly mad, in a 'presenting an infomercial' style.
Hi. I'm an entrepreneur and you're not. How do I know this? Because I'm the one being paid to do the talking and you're just sitting on your sofa watching like a slack-jawed idiot.
Other than being asked for money, the question I am asked most often is, “why don't you pay your taxes like an honest citizen?”. This is a bad question but I will give it a good answer and my reasoning will be thought through properly because I'm an entrepreneur.
Last year I earned two billion pounds and a few scrappy millions. If I had paid tax on that income, I would have taken home one billion pounds and fewer scrappy millions. This would not be enough to make it worth my while going to work. Would you?
People who are not entrepreneurs will respond that they think that I should pay money back to the country that raised, educated, cared for, supported and generally maintained my body and lifestyle. I say this is balderdash! This country has given me nothing and I continue to take nothing from it while giving it nothing in return.
I was raised by feral sheep in a woodland back-country. When I first encountered people I took nothing from them except basic instruction in clothes-making. I never attended school, having learned everything from conversations and books discarded by litterbugs.
“But you depend upon the infrastructure of the country!” I hear you grumble in your whining underachieving voices. Nonsense!
My family and I do not need the national health service. We cure ourselves. A simple swab down with bleach and the kitchen converts into an operating theatre. I removed my daughter's tonsils myself and have been taking advice on how to give myself a quadruple bypass when the inevitable coronary comes. When my wife's waters broke, I sent her to her room and told her to get on with it.
My home is utterly fireproof and so I have no need of a fire service. Everything is made of concrete which, of course, cannot burn and has many other advantages, for example a concrete mattress means goodbye to back-ache. I will not have cats about the place and so will never need them rescued from trees.
Roads? Who needs them? I travel by low-flying helicopter. Why low-flying? So that I do not need air-traffic control. How low-flying? Between six inches and three feet depending on the weather.
I know what you're thinking now – how do I get my high-quality goods into the shops for you people to spend your hard-earned cash on? I don't. Retailers take delivery in international waters, at which point they buy the ship, the contracts with the crew and all the goods. If they choose to dock at a port and use road or rail freight then that is their concern, not mine. They all choose that approach which is why I am an entrepreneur and they are slackers.
I sense you're searching for the loophole. I tell you, this has been thought through because I am an entrepreneur which, of course, you are not. It is not enough for me to be legally able to not pay tax through some complicated arrangement whereby my wife owns everything while residing precisely nowhere. (It's not actually called 'nowhere' but if you'd been to this tax haven, you'd know why I think of it in those terms.) I am also ethically, morally, ecumenically and thoughtfully right.
I am nothing if not thorough. Any lawyer or accountant who wishes to work for me must walk (or use my helicopter, although my charge for this would be greater than his fee) to a purpose-built structure which takes nothing from the country's infrastructure, having been built out of stone and concrete from my land. These structures can be cold and gloomy, especially at night in winter but that is the fault of the oppressive tax regime in this country.
Recreation? You forget that I am entrepreneur and so my recreation involves driving fast cars blisteringly fast. I have my own track on my own land, the tarmac being made from resources on my estate. The fuel comes from the oil well in the spring meadow and is refined in the basement of the château. The cars are assembled by mechanics using components created here from various metal ores found a few hundred metres below the tennis court. The mechanics walk here or travel by one of my helicopters.
So don't forget that when you buy my high-quality products from a slacker retailer, the profits are all being spirited away out of the country where they remain untaxed, contributing nothing whatsoever to the economy of your home country. Buying from me is truly a win-win situation. I get richer and you can protest to the government which, clearly, is not made up of entrepreneurs or they would be doing what I'm doing.
Buy my stuff and let's make this country great again.
P.S. In the unlikely event that someone with links to David Mitchell reads this and brings it to his attention, I would indeed be more than happy to allow him to use this material in return for some credit, a sensible fee and a twelve-year contract as a senior writer at the BBC.
P.P.S. Obviously, all of these requirements are negotiable but you've got to start the negotiations somewhere. And I'm not going to fall into that trap again, you know, the one they got me in when I started working for that company (anagram of BUS) where I was so badly advised (by a recruitment agent for goodness sake) that I asked for a salary lower than the lowest they could give someone at that grade. Oh happy days.
