Alex Cobham is now a regular commentator for the Guardian newspaper in the UK.He has an article out today on private equity. He argues that “The longer the government delays a crackdown on private equity tax-dodgers, the more divided a society we’ll become.” I think he’s right.

Paul Wolfowitz is to join the American Enterprise Institute, according to the FT. Having been drummed out of the World Bank for his unethical practices (or whatever lese you might wish to call them). I note that on the home page of that body there is right now reference to their publication on “the inefficiencies
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We’ve just had a paper on the possible impact unitary tax would have on EU member states. It suggested that this might give an 8% increase to the UK corporation tax take. The “off the cuff” response from HMRC? It was “we wouldn’t welcome that. This might make the UK look less attractive”. Actually, that’s
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I’m always willing to give credit where it is due. The Oxford tax conference has moved to international tax issues today, and the first session looked at issues relating to the recently announced consultation on the taxation of foreign source business income in the UK. Mike Williams, head of international tax at HMRC introduced the
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The theme of the first day here at Oxford was tax avoidance. Although an international conference the focus was on the UK. The new relationship between HMRC and large business was at the core of discussion. As a result key words were trust, transparency, real time disclosure and cooperation. The aim of HMRC is simple.
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Andrew Dilnot was director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies for many years. Now he’s Principal of St Hugh’s College Oxford and the university’s pro-Vice Chancellor. This evening he made a complete fool of himself as the after dinner speaker at the Oxford Centre for Business Taxation’s dinner. He took it upon himself to address
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I have been asked by senior academics at the above Centre to clarify my blog, posted on Monday. They have made clear to me none of the existing leadership of the Centre were involved with the management of the Said Business School when cash was accepted from Wasif Said. I am happy to publish that
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Heather Self, a partner in Grant Thornton in the UK has probably come out with the quote of the day at Oxford (so far). She said: Tax is just cash. I can’t see nay link between that and things like hospitals or those sorts of things that people like to claim. Even in this audience
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Down here in Oxford an academic took me aside to discuss my comments on Mike Devereux’s work, published hereon Monday. His argument was that a company can pay tax, but can’t bear it. In other words, he argued in support of Mike that the tax charge on a corporation can be passed on to labour,
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