In 2015, Bono, the U2 frontman, said in response to criticism of the band’s tax-avoidance activity: “It’s just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we’re taxed.”

We have heard a lot of the same in the past few days following the release of the Paradise Papers, revealing the extraordinary lengths individuals and corporations go to in order to minimise their tax liabilities to the rest of us. Time and time again, we hear the refrain, “But it’s all perfectly legal, nothing illegal was done” or the more odious “We would never condone anything illegal, we insist on the highest possible standards and integrity”.

Corporates such as Facebook, Apple and Google remind us, normally via their expensively appointed spokespeople, that it is all clearly and obviously ‘legal’. No issue, so nothing to detain us here?

The Paradise Papers highlight the deliberately grey structures and behaviours employed – tax-less jurisdictions, complicated and multi-layered shell company structures, offshore trusts and foundations, invisible accounts, ‘beneficial ownerships’ and a host of diversionary activities employed by the world’s rich and ‘would-be rich’ to minimise liability.

Clever, smart, commonsense and, of course, entirely ‘legal’.

“It was my accountant or advisor what made me do it… If I had known…” Footballers, racing drivers, singers, film stars, TV celebrities, politicians. It’s not just corporations and businesspeople who know these very expensive and very clever (but, as we have said, time and time again, entirely legal) advisers, companies, structures and behaviours.

The scale of tax avoidance dwarfs the entire budget of many of the world’s poorest countries

So, if it’s all perfectly kosher, above board and straightforward, why go to such extraordinary and labyrinthine lengths to hide it?

The Paradise Papers revealed, for example, that Bono just happens to have property investments in Lithuania structured through Malta, that the company at the centre of this, Appleby, just happens to have offices in Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, etc. and their client list just happens to include over 150 ‘politically exposed persons’.

And Appleby’s corporate clients just happen to include Citibank, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank, ­JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, ­Lloyds Banking Group, Price Waterhouse Cooper, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Santander UK, etc. All perfectly legal, above board and ‘normal’!

So why try to hide it from revenue authorities? Is it simply that these individuals and corporations are ‘smart people’, while the rest of us are not?

And why, when requested to provide detail and documents related to such investments and accounts do they go to such (of course legal) lengths to resist?

Many revenue authorities across Europe do not see it as automatically legal, ‘normal’ and ‘above board’ and in recent years have been (and are now again) examining the potential tax liabilities revealed in the individual cases highlighted by the Paradise Papers. They continue to seek detailed information and continue to be faced with obfuscation, a phalanx of ‘lawyering’ and, of course, lies.

So, the question many of us might pose is this: even if it is ‘legal’, is it unethical or immoral and does it do harm?

And of course we know the answer: it is unethical, highly immoral and it does do harm, and it does so, shamefully, to many of the world’s poorest, most vulnerable and least powerful.

And the scale of it is truly staggering – the Tax Justice Network estimates that between $21 and $32 trillion of private wealth is held offshore and that governments are losing upwards of $189 billion a year via hidden offshore wealth.

Since the 1970s, it is estimated that the world’s rich elites (aided by eager and supportive banks) accumulated between $7.3 and $9.3 trillion in offshore wealth by 2010, making a mockery of our paltry and pathetic aid programmes.

This directly results in state and, by definition, community funding losses that could and should be available for health, education, infrastructure and a host of welfare and well-being programmes.

When placed in the context of human tragedies such as world hunger and absolute poverty, the scale is nothing short of obscene and unconscionable.

An estimated $30 billion per year would end hunger and just $60 billion would end absolute poverty.

The scale of tax avoidance dwarfs the entire budget of many of the world’s poorest countries (an estimate of Apple’s offshore cash alone is $250 billion).

Then an additional insult as smug and well-oiled corporate leaders, politicians and celebrities proclaim innocence, ignorance or lack of responsibility.

Simultaneously, their financial advisers, lawyers and media apologists reassure that all is legal, and if perhaps it might not be, well, catch us if you can.

Colm Regan is an educator who has been involved with human rights issues.