U2’s The Edge rejects tax evasion accusation

The guitarist defends the band in a letter to the Baltimore Sun

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U2's The Edge and Bono

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The band U2 was accused of evading taxes by transferring part of their business activities overseas in a letter to the editor of the ‘Baltimore Sun’ written by a man named Simon Moroney, and now the band’s guitarist, the Edge, is speaking out again the accusations.

In a letter in response to the ‘Baltimore Sun,’ the Edge firmly rejected that U2 and Bono have in any way neglected their tax paying responsibilities.

"For the record U2 and the individual band members have a totally clean record with every jurisdiction in which they are required to pay tax and have never been, and will never be, involved in tax evasion," wrote the Edge.

The guitarist denied the "possibly libelous accusation that U2 and Bono have, by moving part of their business activities to Holland, been involved in tax evasion," and defended all of U2's activities by saying that they had paid what was owed in taxes. He also said that they each had paid millions of dollars worth of taxes to the United States Internal Revenue Services(IRS) over the years.
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In a letter following the Edge’s defense, Moroney stated that he was not accusing U2 of criminal tax evasion but was in turn calling them out on their tactic of aligning their business ventures with the intentions of avoiding tax payments.  

The allegations are strongly denied by the band, and the Edge cited that even Owen Durgan of Ireland's Ministry of Finance saw no fault in the band moving their business elsewhere.

In an interview with Spin Magazine in March 2009, Durgan said: "We have companies moving here from the rest of the EU, so it all evens out."

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