Section 2 passage ３

整篇文章的難度比較高，專業(yè)性較強(qiáng)，從新東方長(zhǎng)期的教學(xué)經(jīng)驗(yàn)來(lái)看，一旦涉及經(jīng)濟(jì)和財(cái)稅問(wèn)題，考生的心理壓力普遍就會(huì)比較大。

這篇是英國(guó)衛(wèi)報(bào)２００９年２月２日的文章，是一個(gè)總分總的結(jié)構(gòu)，主要內(nèi)容是無(wú)論是ＨＭＲＣ還是各大主流媒體，甚至是ＭＰ都無(wú)法得知企業(yè)的稅款到底是多少，全文主旨出現(xiàn)在了第二段：＂secrecy and complexity＂清晰地表達(dá)出了無(wú)法得知稅收的根本原因就是保密性和復(fù)雜性，而后面的文章則就是針對(duì)這兩點(diǎn)而做的闡述。

文章的第三段提到了本文的另一個(gè)關(guān)鍵詞匯＂tax avoidance＂，提出了一切問(wèn)題都源于大家對(duì)“避稅”一詞的不同理解。接下來(lái)的第四和第五段，第六段就詳細(xì)描述了第一點(diǎn)“secrecy＂的問(wèn)題，連自己的shareholders有時(shí)候都無(wú)法知道所有的subsidiary的情況，更何況是我們這些outlanders。文章中把這種情況比喻為一種jigsaw(拼圖)。

文章的第七段開(kāi)始，就說(shuō)到了另一個(gè)問(wèn)題“complexity”,這樣的復(fù)雜的情況來(lái)自于“Each company has its own method of accounting for tax”（第七段）計(jì)算稅款的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)不同，“registers of several different countries”（第八段）注冊(cè)的子公司實(shí)在太多。

文章的第九段，表達(dá)了現(xiàn)在四大財(cái)務(wù)公司的基本工作思路，他們“have no interest in helping outsiders understand their world”，正是因?yàn)閷＜覀兊牟缓献鳎屨兔襟w云里霧里了。最后一段中也就表達(dá)了政府的無(wú)奈情緒。

在理清楚文章的基本行文結(jié)構(gòu)和思路之后，我們就不難發(fā)現(xiàn)，文章的理解并不困難，文章所述還是比較常見(jiàn)的經(jīng)濟(jì)思路。于是乎，我們看到，題目的難度也不小，幾乎這篇文章所有的題目都不僅僅是“fact Questions”, 相反，它們都是需要分析的，只有在看懂了文章的基礎(chǔ)上才可以進(jìn)行答題，理解了深層含義才能體會(huì)言下之意。

The Guardian, Monday 2 February 2009

１Even the people in charge of collecting the taxes - Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) 英國(guó)稅務(wù)及海關(guān)- admit they have only the vaguest idea of how many further billions of pounds they could be getting ... and it took a freedom of information request before they would admit the extent of their lack of knowledge.

２Any media organisation or MP attempting to pursue the subject will find themselves hampered by the same difficulties faced by the tax collectors - secrecy and complexity. The Guardian's investigation, which we publish over the coming two weeks, is no different.

３The difficulty starts with an inability of anyone to agree a definition of "tax avoidance". It continues through the limited amount of information in the public domain. And it is further hampered by the extraordinary complexity of modern global corporations.

４International companies based in the UK may have hundreds of subsidiary companies, which many use to take advantage of differing tax regimes as they move goods, services and intellectual property around the world. It is estimated that more than half of world trade consists of such movements (known as transfer-pricing) within corporations.

５Companies are legally required publicly to declare these subsidiaries. But they generally tell shareholders of only the main subsidiaries. The Guardian's investigation found five major UK-based corporations which had ignored the requirements of the Companies Act by failing to identify offshore subsidiaries.This is just one example of the atmosphere of secrecy and non-disclosure in Britain which has allowed tax avoidance避稅 to flourish. The result is that few outside of the lucrative獲利多的industries of banking, accountancy and tax law have understood the scale of the capital flight that is now taking place.

６British tax inspectors privately describe as formidable the mountain outsiders have to climb in order to comb through the accounts of international companies based in London."The companies hold all the cards," said one senior former tax inspector. "It's very difficult because you don't always know what you're looking for.""You are confronted with delay, obstruction and a lot of whingeing絮絮叨叨地抱怨from companies who complain about 'unreasonable requests'. Sometimes you are just piecing together a jigsaw."

７Another former senior tax inspector said: "One of the problems the Revenue has is that the company doesn't have to disclose the amount of tax actually paid in any year and the accounts won't reveal the liability. Each company has its own method of accounting for tax: there's no uniform way of declaring it all."For journalists trying to probe these murky waters, the problems are so substantial that few media organisations attempt it. They face the additional hurdle that the British libel laws can land them with costs or damages in the millions if they make mistakes on the basis of the publicly available information.

８A trawl 搜羅through the published accounts of even a single major group of companies can involve hunting around in the registers of several different countries. It takes a lot time, and, when literally hundreds of specially-created subsidiaries exist, a lot of money.　Companies - with some far-sighted British exceptions - simply refuse to disclose any more than what appears in the published figures.　The legal fiction that a public company is a "legal person", entitled to total tax secrecy, and even to "human rights", makes it normally impossible for a journalist to penetrate the tax strategies of big business. HMRC refuse, for example, to identify the 12 major companies who used tax avoidance schemes to avoid paying any corporation tax whatever.

９It is difficult to access experts to guide the media or MPs through this semantic jungle. The "Big Four" accountants and tax QCs Queen's Counsel'御用大律師 who make a living out of tax avoidance, have no interest in helping outsiders understand their world. Few others have the necessary knowledge, and those that do, do not come cheap or may be conflicted."Secrecy is the offshore world's great protector, " writes William Brittain-Caitlin, a London-based former Kroll investigator in his book, Offshore.

１０"Government and states are generally at a loss to diagnose in detail what is really going on inside corporate internal markets. Corporations are extremely secretive about the special tax advantages these structures give them. It is only when some outlandish transfer pricing scheme or other particularly blatant公開(kāi)的bit of tax fixing goes on that even a small window is opened onto the hidden offshore world of corporations."