
How the Rich Beat the Taxman
George Osborne's line "we're all in this together" is the target reporter Antony Barnett sets out to test, tracking whether Britain's cabinet ministers and top Conservatives pay tax at the same rates as everyone else. With more than twenty millionaires sitting in the UK cabinet at the time, Barnett examines ministers' financial affairs alongside those of major party donors, then follows the money offshore to British-controlled tax havens including the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. The film lays out the specific mechanisms wealthy individuals and companies use to reduce their bills, from offshore trusts to residency arrangements, and asks who benefits when the state's own officials rely on the same avoidance ploys they are meant to regulate. Rather than treating tax avoidance as an abstract loophole story, the film ties it directly to the people setting fiscal policy, making the investigation as much about political conflict of interest as about accounting technique.