At Penguin Books’ 1960 obscenity trial in the matter of DH Lawrence’s steamy novel ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, the prosecuting counsel famously asked the jury of randomly picked men and women, ‘Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?’ The jury found in favor of the publishers, and both the judge and prosecuting counsel were laughed out of court, as out of touch with the modern world.

The appeal filed last week by supermodel Bar Refaeli’s lawyers against a decision of an Israeli District Court to side with the tax authorities in her disputed claim of  non-Israeli tax residence, appeared to suggest that the judge had also not learnt to move with the times. It argued that, had Refaeli been married to American actor Leonardo DiCaprio, rather than simply living with him in the U.S., there would have been no question that her center of life, and hence tax residence, was outside Israel. His Honor’s failure to recognize her ability to maintain her Israeli connections – while not her residence – in a world of social media, cheap telecommunications and affordable air travel was also seen as archaic.

However, as opposed to the Penguin prosecutor, who really did seem to have fallen out of the Downton Abbey woodwork, the judge was receiving some pretty unfair press here.

When he was trying to get to the bottom of the couple’s relationship, the judge heard quite a bit of bizarre stuff from witnesses including Refaeli’s mother and a bosom-friend actress, whose embarrassing incoherence on the obscure subject of DiCaprio’s ubiquitous hat, as well as his lack of intimate communication with the supermodel’s friends, left me wondering whether actors are programmed never to come up with their own lines. (This, of course, was not a problem for Refaeli, who – thanks to the way she is programmed – doesn’t need to communicate verbally at all).

The issue that really needs to be examined is whether superstars should be treated like the rest of us at all when it comes to taxes.

Once upon a time, it was the aristocracy that filled the ranks of superstardom. Monarchs, who until not so long ago were considered to rule by Divine right, have not traditionally paid taxes. The Queen (there are many queens, but only one Queen) has paid some tax VOLUNTARILY since the early nineties, but she could change her mind if the housekeeping bill got out of control. Here in Israel, with a wink to the British Mandate, the president is exempt from tax on his presidential income.

Back in 1923, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway wondered excitedly– along with everyone else in sight – whether the mysterious occupant of a blacked-out limousine was the Prince of Wales, Britain’s future king. Faced with a similar scene in 1999, the Mrs. Dalloway of Michael Cunningham’s tribute novel, ‘The Hours’, hoped it might be Meryl Streep.

Divinity has passed to the superstars. Their irregular conjugal behavior – which the judge found hard to comprehend – is perhaps because they are extra-terrestrial beings, flitting from country to country and not bound by the rules of us mere mortals.

Even the OECD’s  model convention on double taxation singles out sportsmen and entertainers as the only professions with a specific article (17) to deal with their out-of-the-ordinary  international tax issues.

A sensible solution, based in part on Article 17, might be to only tax these gods and godesses in the countries where they work – one day here, one day there etc., without assigning them a tax residence. The downside would be that – thanks to those in my profession – before long, all movies would be made, and sports events held, in countries where there was no income tax.

The movies could get over the obvious problem of ‘location, location, location’ with the latest CGI technology. But what about sports? Have you ever thought about zero income tax Qatar for the 2022 Football World Cup?  Not a blade of grass or pint of beer in sight. But, there will be. In abundance.

In the absence of  a foolproof alternative, it is probably wise to treat them like the rest of us. I believe that is what the judge was trying to do.