U2 God complex

[ultimatemind]

vsb said:

Bono is a hypocrite. You know how he goes around preaching how governments should be donating more of their citizens' salaries, ahem, tax payments, to charity? Well, the Sydney Morning Herald just had a lovely article yesterday explaining how not only does Bono not donate any money to charity, but he also DOES NOT PAY TAX. Yup, Ireland had a law that said that music royalties were exempt from income tax. It's now changing the law, so what did Bono do? He moved his home for tax purposes to the Netherlands, where he still won't have to pay tax. Nice! This guy pays essentially no money to the government in income tax, and doesn't donate to charity, but he's telling governments to give any more of other people's tax money to charity. What an ass. Let me see if I can find the link to the article . . . .

I saw that too, or something similar to it. He was also trying to bully the US government into the same thing. When he gives up 80% of all the coin he's banked over the years to these same causes he claims to be such a champion of, then I'll believe he truly cares, and isn't just using them for his own personal publicity machine.

[vsb]

Bono likes to preach but hates tax
January 29, 2007

U2's raking it in, especially since going Dutch, Richard Tomlinson and Fergal O'Brien report.

DURING the final concert of U2's world tour on December 9, Bono, the Irish rock band's lead singer, launched into One, a song about a love affair gone sour. "Did I disappoint you or leave a bad taste in your mouth?" he sang to 47,000 fans at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu.

At Bono's command, some of the fans held aloft their cell phones and sent text messages of support to ONE, the US group that's lobbying the US Government to donate an additional 1 per cent of its budget to ending poverty.

Bono made the same tie-in for the lobbying group during most of the 131 concerts on the Vertigo tour, which began in March 2005 and was seen by 4.6 million fans in Europe, North America and Asia. They sent about 500,000 text messages of support to ONE, according to the group.

While Bono was making his appeal, U2 was racking up $389 million in gross ticket receipts, making Vertigo the second-most lucrative tour of all time, according to Billboard magazine. No.1 is the Rolling Stones' current tour, which by the end of 2006 had received $425 million.

Revenue from the Vertigo tour is funnelled through companies that are mostly registered in Ireland and structured to minimise taxes. "U2 are arch-capitalists - arch-capitalists - but it looks as if they're not," says Jim Aiken, a music promoter who helped stage U2 concerts in Ireland during the 1980s and '90s.

"Bono's campaigns reflect a great amount of concerns that U2's audience also has, such as AIDS and malaria in Africa, and that can't help but have a beneficial effect on record sales," says Simon Garfield, author of Expensive Habits: The Dark Side of the Music Industry, a book about the business of rock.

U2 has sold about 9 million copies of the album linked to the Vertigo tour, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, for which it owns all rights. In addition, U2 sells merchandise at the concerts, such as a $30 T-shirt with a photo of the band on the front.

With his trademark wraparound sunglasses and cowboy hat, Bono is as famous for exhorting world leaders - from US President George Bush to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern - to give money to Africa as he is for his music.

He was awarded a knighthood in December by the Queen and his name has been mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize in the British and US press.

On Friday Bono joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair and South African President Thabo Mbeki at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for a panel discussion called "Delivering on the Promise of Africa".

The 46-year-old Dublin native, born Paul Hewson, is also focusing on his investments. "We can move into business, and let's bring our idealism into whatever piece of the world we happen to be standing in," Bono told Michka Assayas in Bono on Bono.

The most recent example is Product(RED), a marketing agreement with half a dozen companies that are selling a special RED line of clothing, mobile phones and other merchandise and donating 40 per cent of the profit they make from the products to a charity that pays for AIDS drugs for Africans with HIV.

Bono's own dealings haven't always followed the altruistic ideals he espouses, says Richard Murphy, a British adviser to the Tax Justice Network, an international lobbying group.

Murphy points to the band's decision to move its music publishing company to the Netherlands from Ireland in June 2006 in order to minimise taxes. The move came six months before Ireland ended an exemption on musicians' royalty income, which is generally untaxed in the Netherlands.

"This is somebody who's exceptionally rich taking the opportunity to shift his tax burden to somebody else but then asking governments around the world to spend that tax take in the way that he would like," Murphy says.
U2's move to the Netherlands is wrong, says Richard Molenaar, senior partner at All Arts Tax Advisers, a Rotterdam tax consulting firm for artists and musicians. "Everybody needs to pay his fair share of taxation to the government and therefore we have roads and education and everything," he says.

During the 1990s, U2 used non-executive directors who were resident in an offshore tax haven to limit the amount paid by the four band members: Bono, lead guitarist The Edge, 45, whose real name is David Evans, bass guitarist Adam Clayton, 46, and drummer Larry Mullen, 45.

"We pay a great deal of tax around the world and in Ireland we don't pay any more taxes than we have to," says Paul McGuinness, U2's manager. "We're like any other business."

"U2 were never dumb in business," Bono says in Bono on Bono. "We don't sit around thinking about world peace all day."

What a business it is. Bono's empire encompasses real estate, private-equity investments, a hotel, a clothing line and a chain of restaurants.

He also owns a stake in 15 companies and trusts, including concert-booking agencies, record production firms and trusts that are mostly registered in Ireland. U2 was one of the first successful bands in the world to have obtained all rights to its own music.

In addition, Bono shares three homes with his wife and four children, including a house near Nice in the south of France, a duplex apartment overlooking New York's Central Park that he bought from Apple's Steve Jobs, and a gated estate in Killiney, 16 kilometres south of Dublin, with a panoramic view of the Irish Sea.

While Bono promotes charitable causes, he doesn't disclose whether he personally gives any money to them and, if so, how much. These include Amnesty International, the Burma Campaign UK, DATA, which stands for Debt, AIDS, Trade and Africa, the environmental group Greenpeace and ONE.

"It's actually, I think, more honest to say we're rock stars, we're havin' it large, we're havin' a great time and don't focus on charity too much - that's private; justice is public," he told the Dublin's Sunday Independent newspaper in June 2005.

Bono's greatest value may be as a spokesman, not a donor. "Bono is the most extraordinarily talented lobbyist," says Jamie Drummond, DATA's executive director, who helps organise ONE.

"He's got extremely persuasive, charming interpersonal skills that can appeal to the thing in a politician that reminds them of the spark that got them into politics in the first place, and the idea of public service."


OK, so in re-reading this, I might have gone a little overboard -- it just says that he refuses to comment on whether he donates to charity, but it is telling that one of his charities makes the point that his real value is as a spokesperson, NOT as a donor (despite all his money!). At any rate, the main point of my comment above still holds-- a guy who is trying to dodge tax (which is not in and of itself a bad thing, mind you) has the gall to be preaching to governments about how they should be spending even less of the tax money that OTHER people pay on those countries' own problems and instead donating it to his pet issues.

[Denise7609]

Can you go blind by doing this to much?

[illumination70]

ninetails said:

Bono, Larry and Edge were part of a Born Again Christian community when they were younger, so I think that they'd be glad that their music is being used in this way.

Well said, Ninetails!!!

[threnody]

Actually, the "community" was more like a really shady cult.

[artful dodger]

This is not to directly comment on the article that started this thread but I, myself, stopped being so into U2 when they got too big for their britches and the preachy bit. Having said that, I'd rather scores of people adore their music as opposed to several dozen other bands I could name. It's just that any band or musician that is too preachy or churchy turns me way off. Personal preference. I love 80s U2, though.

[murderess]

Glad to see you admitted to going a little overboard there VSB

I didn't get that whole hypocrite vibe from the article like you did.
Just because he does not advertise his own personal charity donations does not mean he isn't doing so, he is just private about it.
Bono himself has admitted to only being a musician just trying to use his fame to do some good in the world.
I don't think he has a God complex either. Yes, he has a persona on stage that is bigger then life but he is a performer and most front men (coughSimoncough ) have inflated egos.
As for the tax issue, well a lot of companies do all sorts of things to lower taxes so I can't really blame them. It's a business move. However I wonder if his personal taxes aren't paid to Ireland as he still has a big house there.
He's successful and people are always going to try to bring him down. I don't see any horrible evidence against him. If you don't like him or his music, no problem everyone has a right to their opinions.

I like Bono and I like U2 but do i worship them/him? Nope. I don't even own every album. He’s just a guy trying to do a little good in the world. Bravo to him for that.
The music in church thing, I agree with Stup. I don't think U2 has much to do with it.

just my 2 cents

[durangirl316]

danigirl ... i agree. i have heard U2 played in church before and it didnt have anything to do with Bono having a God complex or not. It is just contemporary music that reflects the (individual) church's desire to stay in touch and deliver the type of worship and/or environment that its' members want.

my friend's church played ZZ Top's 'Jesus just left Chicago' recently.....

and now you have my 2 cents. or at least a cent and ahalf.

[vsb]

Hey there Murderess! Just to let you know, my comments here have nothing to do with liking or not liking U2 or Bono. In fact, I've been a U2 fan for almost as long as I've been a Duran fan (thank you WLIR for your brilliance in the early 80s), and Bono is an integral part of U2, so this truly is not an attack based on any personal dislike. It's just that when it comes to this social justice stuff, Bono comes off as a big ol' hypocrite,and it makes me mad. And I'm not even talking about concerts -- he can promote whatever causes he wants at his concerts. My problem is when he badgers governments to allow him to schedule meetings with top officials and then spends those meetings trying to pressure the leaders with whom he is meeting into agreeing to donate huge amounts of their taxpayers' hard-earned money to his causes. It especially riles me when Bono issues press releases trying to personally shame people who do not want to meet with him. Simply put, Bono wants other people with a lot less money than him to lose out so that their governments can send a lot more of their tax receipts around the globe to fight causes where simply throwing additional money at the problems likely will not work (this is *especially* a problem in Africa, where foreign aid has a problem of disappearing into corrupt leaders' Swiss bank accounts when the aid does not have major strings attached), yet he won't put his own money where his mouth is -- certainly not on the tax front, and possibly not on the charitable donation front, either. I think this quote from the article says it all: "This is somebody who's exceptionally rich taking the opportunity to shift his tax burden to somebody else but then asking governments around the world to spend that tax take in the way that he would like" You don't have to be a U2 hater to get a bad taste in your mouth over this.

PS. I certainly do not want to give the impression that there is anything wrong with acting in any way that is legal to lower your tax bill. To the contrary, if the law allows you to take certain steps to minimize the amount of your money that you have to hand over to the government, then I say "go for it." My beef with Bono is specific to the fact that this guy is out there telling governments to give away billions of dollars more than they already do to his pet charitible causes at the same time that he is out there trying to avoid paying tax. The fact that it is unclear whether Bono puts his money where his mouth is on the charitable donation front (which point is not helped by charities deflecting the question when they are asked about it), just compounds the issue.

PPS. To answer two of your points, Murderess, and without getting too technical, if Bono names a company as the owner of the royalty income, then it doesn't really matter if he's living in a big house in Ireland; what matters is where the company legally resides, because that is where the tax (if any) would be paid -- and apparently that company now resides in the Netherlands, which, according to the article, does not tax royalty income. As for Bono getting his hands on the money paid to the company, I'm sure that his lawyers and accountants have structured his distributions from the company in ways that result in a much lower tax bite than pure "income" payments would.

[marchmadness]

ultimatemind said:

vsb said:

Bono is a hypocrite. You know how he goes around preaching how governments should be donating more of their citizens' salaries, ahem, tax payments, to charity? Well, the Sydney Morning Herald just had a lovely article yesterday explaining how not only does Bono not donate any money to charity, but he also DOES NOT PAY TAX. Yup, Ireland had a law that said that music royalties were exempt from income tax. It's now changing the law, so what did Bono do? He moved his home for tax purposes to the Netherlands, where he still won't have to pay tax. Nice! This guy pays essentially no money to the government in income tax, and doesn't donate to charity, but he's telling governments to give any more of other people's tax money to charity. What an ass. Let me see if I can find the link to the article . . . .

I saw that too, or something similar to it. He was also trying to bully the US government into the same thing. When he gives up 80% of all the coin he's banked over the years to these same causes he claims to be such a champion of, then I'll believe he truly cares, and isn't just using them for his own personal publicity machine.

I totally agree. It's great to find people who don't worship bono, especially based on false pretenses. I've wondered for the longest why doesn't he shell out some of his own cash if he cares so much. It's much better for him to have Joe Average donate their hard earned, TAXED money and he get all the glory.

Blech. Is there a puking gremlin on here?