Finally Theresa May has done what David Cameron never had the stomach for – cracking down on tax avoidance

When comedian Jimmy Carr was caught out using a clever accounting trick to get away with paying about 1 per cent tax on his fortune, he faced a backlash – not least because his routines had included lines covering the exorbitant wealth of British bankers and the poor behaviour of the banking sector during the financial crisis. “I’ve not broken the law. I’ve not done anything illegal,” he said. “But morally, morally…”

That public whipping had an effect; in 2014 he contributed more than half a million pounds to the exchequer – enough, the press reported, to pay for 25 graduate trainee nurses.

But his actions in taking advice to keep his taxes to a minimum were both legal and publicly encouraged even if they induce a certain moral biliousness. So, inevitably, others came to Carr’s defence, including fellow comedians John Bishop and Rufus Hound. “A lot of people seem to be making the case that tax avoidance is morally wrong,” the latter said. “In which case, vote to change it. I do.”

Yet, without any intervention at the ballot box whatsoever, that change has now happened under a Conservative Government. While David Cameron waffled on about the matter of tax avoidance for the full six years of his premiership, eventually talking himself out after the embarrassing revelations of the Panama Papers, his successor Theresa May has immediately acted to tackle the problem at its source: the tax advice industry which makes huge profits helping its customers find ways to wriggle out of their obligations, moral or otherwise.

In a shrewd, sensible move, the Treasury has warned that accountants and financial advisors could find themselves liable for up to 100 per cent of the tax they help others to dodge. It means the responsibility now lies not with the individual – who might have a very limited understanding of their rights, responsibilities and expectations regarding tax and therefore pay an advisor to, well, advise them – but those who make a commercial profit from seeking to reduce the national tax take by deliberately helping high net worth individuals find clever loopholes through which they can slip.

Of course, it’s incredulous to suggest that someone such as Jimmy Carr, with obligations to the state of about £500,000 a year, would be unaware that some serious tax planning had gone on upon the receipt of a bill that calls only for 1 per cent of income to be returned to the Treasury. But that example is not representative of everyone who uses a tax advisor to manage their income and outgoings. The burden must be equally on those who make tax their occupation to be acting not only on behalf of their client but on behalf of the best interests of the state in which they ply their trade too.

Like the client, the accountant has rights, responsibilities and expectations. That’s why the second proposal – that companies caught doing too much clever tax planning should be named and shamed, to “alert and protect taxpayers” – is equally clever in the message it sends out.

Yes, the Government understands that people will want to both act within the spirit of the law and yet keep their tax bill to a minimum, and no, that doesn’t make them criminals or morally bankrupt.

But organisations that spend their days deliberately seeking ways to help others sidestep them – behaviour that is not absolutely within the spirit of the law – are a different beast altogether. Nobody should want to work with a company like that, whatever the financial benefits. As Jane Ellison, financial secretary to the Treasury, said: “These tough new sanctions will make would-be enablers think twice and in turn reduce the number of schemes on the market.”

These companies and tax limitation advisors should have been the target of Government efforts from the off. The state versus the boy-done-well was never going to win hearts and minds; your Government versus those who make a business out of ripping you off? Well, that speaks for itself.

Clever, indeed. So why didn’t David Cameron announce a policy like this earlier?

In 2013, delivering a speech to the Davos summit – the world’s highest-profile conference of the global elite, where the tax liabilities of the delegates, under normal rules, would run into billions of dollars annually – Cameron called for “proper companies, proper taxes, proper rules”. He then spent years telling the British public they deserved more from those who were wheedling out of paying their proper tax bill.

But when it came to tough action the former PM got “cold feet” – perhaps not so surprising given the revelations about his own family’s involvement with offshore fund protection in the leaked Panama Papers – and, according to the former coalition business secretary Vince Cable, began to find the issue “a bit ambiguous”. “There was a certain amount of rowing back,” Cable confirmed.

He lacked, in the reckoning, the required commitment to the problem of fairness to deliver a tax policy that might cause a few grumbles in the corridors of power. Theresa May is proving willing to take on those vested interests, but her efforts show a little more tact – with the result of a higher take for the exchequer while taking the heat off the influential noses Cameron so gravely feared knocking out of joint.