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Giles Fraser says that tax is not boring but the difference between life and death for many.
This is probably going to be really dull. But I don't care - because, while the subject of tax might make most of us reach for the mental off-switch, it is too important to move swiftly past.
Indeed, it is precisely the eyes-glazing-over factor that is the most effective tax haven for the unscrupulous and the greedy. They want to make it boring: that way, we won't really notice.
So please sit up and concentrate. Christian Aid has estimated that more than $160 billion is lost to poor countries because of tax-dodging by big companies. It is easy to let this figure pass without feeling its full weight.
Millions and billions are just big numbers, right? Our brains don't grasp the scale of figures that are so large.
So here is a way to register the full difference between a million and a billion: a million seconds is about 12 days, and a billion seconds is 31 years. And 160 billion seconds is nearly 5000 years.
Also, $160 billion is one-and-a-half times the annual aid budget for the whole world. This is not boring. It is global life and death.
Vital
This is why the Christian Aid tax campaign is absolutely vital. I understand that there is a complex line between tax avoidance and tax evasion.
Even so, when you have an army of clever accountants, money can be squirrelled away in various offshore accounts in ways that are there only to avoid tax, and the legal can also be deeply immoral.
This is not just a lefty bit of political rhetoric. The other day, I chaired a Christian Aid/Church Action on Poverty debate on the edge of the City.
The conservative political commentator Peter Oborne said this: "People and companies who don't pay tax should be shamed. I believe as citizens, and as political beings on the Left or the Right, that we have a duty to shame companies that don't pay taxes - that don't fulfil their civic duties."
The New Raj Tandoori Restaurant, on Jersey, is the registered home of 800 UK businesses. They are not there for the curry. They are there simply as a trick to avoid tax.
It is right that these companies ought to be named and shamed. Google, for example, makes 28 per cent of its global profits in the UK. Yet, in 2009, it paid £600,000 tax on £1.2 billion of income - a rate of 3.2 per cent. It achieved this by redirecting profits through Ireland and Holland.
Situation
We now have a situation where rich people pay less tax than the people who clean their offices. The situation is even worse in the developing world.
The Christian Aid Tax Bus is now touring the country. It is time for everyone to get on board.
www.christianaid.org.uk/taxbus
• The Revd Dr Giles Fraser is Priest-in-Charge of St Mary’s, Newington, in the diocese of Southwark.
• This column was first published in, and appears courtesy of, The Church Times
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