About thirty years ago, anyone who wanted to hide his millions from the tax authorities needed three things: a plane ticket to Switzerland, a decent portion of guts and a large roll of adhesive tape. At least, that’s how Jordan Belfort approached it, the American stock trader and swindler who became known to the general public after his life story was filmed in the Hollywood hit The Wolf of Wall Street.
On the run from the American tax authorities, Belfort fled to Switzerland shortly before his arrest because of banking secrecy there. Banks in the Alpine country do not have to provide customer data to third parties, which would make his capital safe.
Belfort used his half-Swiss girlfriend for his smuggling: with accomplices he stuck numerous stacks of dollar bills to her body, which she could smuggle across the border under her clothing. Because there was only room for a few tons on one body, Belfort then also deployed his entire in-laws.
Nowadays, avoiding or evading taxes is a lot less cumbersome. The multimillionaire or billion-dollar company that wants to avoid a high tax bill no longer has to travel to Switzerland to make a deposit. It can be done from home, with the help of a trust office and a group of handy accountants and lawyers. They set up a network of companies in tax havens around the world in order to hide the money from governments.
For the tax-shy rich man, this makes life considerably easier. Not for the documentary filmmaker. Because tax avoidance almost always hides from the public’s view, through methods that are difficult to film. It is only through large-scale data leaks such as the Panama Papers (in 2015) and the LuxLeaks (2014) that the outside world occasionally gets a glimpse into the working methods of tax avoiders.
Still, that didn’t stop French director Yannick Kergoat from throwing himself into the subject. The result is La (Très) Grande Evasion, in which Kergoat – together with investigative journalist Denis Robert – tries to explain in an accessible way how big the problem is according to him. It is his third film as a director. Before that, Kergoat mainly edited French feature films. In that role he once won the national film prize César.
The documentary was filmed from a French perspective. Mostly French politicians and French experts speak. Yet the film is just as relevant for audiences from other countries, Kergoat quickly makes clear: this problem is everywhere. After the French documentary, there has been an English translation since this spring, Tax Me if You Can. It can be seen in Dutch cinemas from Thursday.
Lost billions
Kergoat’s documentary begins in the corona pandemic. As in many other countries, the health care system in France cannot cope with the high demand at that time. That’s no surprise, the narrator notes. For years, health care has been eroded due to a lack of money. French President Emmanuel Macron appears on screen, explaining to healthcare workers that he cannot just add millions. Then former British Prime Minister Theresa May follows with the same reasoning: “There is no magic money tree that we can shake.”
In the almost two hours that follow, Kergoat tries to convince the viewer that such a tree does exist. Governments worldwide are missing out on many billions because large companies and wealthy individuals move their income and capital through almost inimitable constructions to countries where they have little or no tax to pay. That is not illegal, the director emphasizes, but something to question.
Layer by layer, the director peels off the theme. He starts with the most understandable route, money smuggling to Switzerland, and then works towards the most complex methods. In doing so, he focuses on frequently mentioned tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, but also the Irish-Dutch route that Apple and Google used for years, for example.
In order not to make the documentary too complex, Kergoat uses a tool that previously worked well in productions such as The Big Short, the 2015 hit film about the financial crisis of 2008 and a group of investors who made good money from it. After all, there was also a danger that the story would become incomprehensible due to the many difficult terms and incomprehensible investment products.
Director Adam McKay solved that in The Big Short by literally stopping the story every now and then for a light-hearted interlude. For example, chef Anthony Bourdain explains in barely half a minute how repeatedly wrapping loans is like making fish soup. Actress Margot Robbie tells, drinking champagne in the bath, how banks made a fortune trading bad loans.
Instead of familiar faces Tax Me if You Can larded with comical animations. Only: they work a lot less well. They go, just like the rest of the film, at lightning speed and it is often unclear what exactly the animator wants to portray with his drawings. As a result, the interludes often raise more questions than they answer.
All in all, the pace and flood of information make Kergoat’s documentary especially suitable for the viewer who wants to make an effort. The only question is whether it will still be surprised. Tax Me if You Can consists mainly of archive images and documents from data leaks. A handful of experts put those earlier revelations into perspective. This makes the documentary a very thorough, sometimes comical summary of what is already known, rather than a production in which new revelations come to light.