Carr appeared in a promotional clip released ahead of the Room 101 TV programme airing, where guests try to banish unwanted or undesirable things or people into the room.
Ironically, Room 101 was reportedly named after the room at the BBC in which Nineteen Eighty-Four author George Orwell had to sit through tortuously boring meetings.
Not a good idea
In a clip made public before the programme airs on 2 February, Carr explained his choice: “This isn’t tax evasion, this is tax avoidance. So, it’s following the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law, and leaving it up to us to decide how much we pay.
“And, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He added: “It’s like one law for rich people and one law for everyone else. And it doesn’t seem fair. And it seems to me that they should make the law much clearer and simpler to follow, and it would be better for everyone.”
He joked that he was a “recent convert to this view”.
He told the audience that it’s “fine” to ignore a letter from HM Revenue & Customs, “they will send another letter, they’re good like that”.
“If, one the other hand, the prime minister of the country that you live in, breaks off from the G20 Summit in Mexico and he comes out early to do a press conference where he talks about nothing other than your personal tax affairs…
“That is going to be a problem.”
Tax avoidance
In 2012, Carr admitted using a scheme, known as K2, to avoid paying higher rates of tax by funnelling millions of his assets through a £168m ($238m, €191.5m) Jersey-based scheme.
Carr later apologised for using the scheme, which enabled him to pay as little as 1% tax on his earnings, according to a BBC report at the time.
An investigation by newspaper The Times accused the TV presenter and comedian of sheltering £3.3m a year through the scheme, which was used by around 1,100 tax avoiders.
