There is a fascinating article on country-by-country reporting and the Base Erosion and Profits Shifting process in this morning’s Tax Analysts (behind a paywall). There is much I could comment on but one paragraph jumped out, which said: At a recent conference in Washington, Mike Williams, director, business international tax at HM Treasury, said he is “worried
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I realise I have not offered praise for HMRC where it is due: that is remiss of me. Let me make amends. I refer to a matter reported in the FT today: Proposals to tighten the screws on users of tax avoidance schemes in next week’s Budget have sparked protests from wealthy investors and their advisers who
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I have to admit to being amused this morning that the FT has been daft enough to run a story that begins: Labour is in danger of looking anti-business in the run-up to the 2015 general election, the former head of the Institute of Directors has warned. Well fancy that, I thought. Whoever would have
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Labour has issued some new policy documents today. I, inevitably, followed up that on the economy and tax. In it Labour says: The next Labour Government will take action to develop a system which is robust and effective in the modern world, which supports investment and job creation, and deals effectively with the complexities of international business.
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Where did US quantitative easing funding end up? Andrew Smithers thinks he has the answer on the FT blog: I am sure he is right. That was why we did and do need green quantitative easing.

The FT has said this morning that the Office for Budget Responsibility has told George Osborne that there is a new £20 billion hole in his budget forecasts. The reason, it says, is that “while Britain has staged a remarkable recovery, indicators of the economy’s capacity for future growth have deteriorated.” This means that “with
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The Guardian has an editorial today that marks the fact that we have had a o.5% bank base rate in the UK for five years now, a wholly unprecedented period both in terms of the rate being so low and, in any modern era, for consistency. The web link for the editorial supposedly summarises its
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The FT has a headline this morning that says: Japan considers tax on Bitcoin transactions as part of crackdown There is one good reason for Japan wanting to do this: it has come to the apparent conclusion that Bitcoin is a commodity used for speculative purposes and not primarily as a currency just as the
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HMRC have this week given publicity to their initial estimate of the VAT tax gap for 2012 – 13.  This is their estimate of the amount of VAT that should have been paid if UK law had been complied with compared to the amount of VAT that was actually received by them in that year.
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