While executives in corporations dine out on double Irish Dutch sandwiches, the rest of us are told to eat cake.

When residents of Crickhowell in South Wales heard that Facebook paid just £5,000 UK corporation tax last year, which is less than almost every independent trader on our high streets, it stuck in their throats. Wednesday night’s BBC documentary, How a town took on the taxman, was a refreshing alternative to Benefits Britain. It exposed the real scroungers in society as executives in designer suits who invoke complex schemes, known as Dutch and double Irish Dutch sandwiches, to avoid paying UK tax. The tab for which is picked up by independent businesses and ordinary tax payers. The poor are left with the crumbs.

Despite HMRC being informed that HSBC helped over 1,000 of its UK customers dodge tax, the investigation against them has been quietly dropped, leaving so many questions unanswered. Not least, why was former HSBC boss, Lord Green, appointed as a Tory minister months after the government received the damning files? 

It seems, if you de fraud the state dressed in a designer suit and armed with a top of the range “tax adviser”, it’s not illegal, even if it is morally bankrupt.

On Monday, The Independent reported that none of the “Big Four” accounting firms  (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, Deloitte & Touche and Ernst & Young) have ever faced regulatory censure for devising tax avoidance schemes deemed illegal. Regulators, such as the Financial Reporting Council and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales were criticised for being staffed by the very firms they are meant to scrutinise.

Prem Sikka, Professor of Accountancy at Essex University, said: “Successive governments have failed to investigate the firms. Instead, the partners of major accountancy firms are given knighthoods and government consultancies. The same firms have colonised regulatory bodies, fund political parties and provide jobs for former and potential ministers. This has brought them political insurance and their anti-social practices continue to inflict enormous social damage.”

The Tories have managed to fast track legislation that squeezes the life blood out of the poorest in society, such as last weeks’ surreptitious invocation of arcane parliamentary procedure to scrap student grants for those on lower incomes. Yet, known loopholes that allow the rich to dodge paying their fair share of taxes, remain conspicuously open. 

Also on Monday, Oxfam produced a report exposing the fact that the Richest 1% in the world own as much as everyone else on the planet and the gap between rich and poor has risen “dramatically” in the last 12 months.  Oxfam urged David Cameron to clamp down on tax dodging by the rich so that the lost revenue could be recouped and used on the NHS, education, and anti-poverty measures.

Tax loopholes allow wealthy bosses to pay a lower tax rate than nurses and teachers. These legal tax dodges rob the public coffers of some £5bn a year. In addition, Kevin Farnsworth, a researcher from York university, recently warned that, at the same time as the government is making 12bn in welfare cuts, taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year in hidden subsidies. That’s more than £3,500 from each household in the UK. You don’t have to be Carol Vorderman to do the maths.

Unless you’re an Independent reader, you’d be hard pressed to know any of the above. The Oxfam report, criticisms of the big 4 accounting firms, the student grants being scrapped behind closed doors, all got buried under the headline; “Teaching Muslim mothers to suck eggs”.

As was Jeremy Corbyn’s progressive vision for a fairer society. He proposed pay ratios between top and bottom to ensure a wider distribution of profit and power in businesses with more than 50 employees. Directors would also be prevented from distributing dividends until they pay all their workers the living wage. Corbyn, like Oxfam, the OECD and the good people of Crickhowell, know that the gaping chasm between the rich and poor destabilises society and the economy.

By taking their taxes offshore, the high street traders of Crickhowell are laying down the gauntlet to HMRC. Either we all get to play this game, or close the loopholes so that no-one can. Whatever the outcome of their experiment, the little town in South Wales has shown that people power should not be underestimated. I’m off to Café Nero (mega tax dodger) to order a double Irish Dutch sandwich. If it’s not on the menu, I’ll go elsewhere and have something that won’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. That rules out humble pie and cake.