The theme of this morning’s article in the FT on large companies not paying tax has been picked up on Radio 4’s World at One programme. I was asked to appear, as was Mike Devereux of Oxford university and the CBI.
Mike was amusing. He expressed surprise at the finding, which has in fact been well [...]
Another front page story of significance this morning. Ashely Seagar in the Guardian reports that City bonuses have reached £14 billion this year. He suggests that figure is spread between £1 million people in the finance industry. That’s still £14,000 each. But as the distribution is incredibly skewed towards a very few people that hides [...]
Vanessa Houlder has a tax article on the front page of the FT today. In it she reports that one third of the UK’s 700 largest companies do not pay tax.
I’m not surprised. I drew attention to this in ‘Mind the Tax Gap’. There are several reason, some of which I discussed with Vanessa last [...]
I’ve been putting off revamping the Tax Research web site (as opposed to this blog) for some time. But I’ve finally got round to it. As you can tell, I’m not a natural designer, and my tendency is to minimalism.
Apart from being generally more useful and informative there are two key new features. The first [...]
I wrote recently about how IFRS pension accounting would compound the current financial problems created by the irrational behaviour of the world’s so called financial experts.
The FT has joined in the theme, publishing an article by Stella Fearnley and Shyam Sunder yesterday. Stella has been professor of accounting at Portsmouth where I was a visiting [...]
I spent some time discussing Inheritance Tax here last week.
Now there’s the resounding evidence that most people neither care about it, or think it has any relevance to their lives. 90% of all adults in the UK do not have a will.
If you were the remotest bit worried about Inheritance Tax you would. So they’re [...]
I note that this week’s tax newsletter from PWC UK has a feature entitled “UK’s non-domiciled regime under fire”.
Too true, although there’s nothing they report that’s not been noted here. They do however note that:
The Tax Justice Network, a group that campaigns against tax havens, argues that the domicile rules amount to “state aid” that [...]
Sorry, to keep referring to it, but Alex Hawkes at Accountancy Age has done a review of Hecklers. I think he’s been objective, and fair. But then I might since he concludes:
All in all, I think the hecklers lost
Funnily enough, I agree with that. But I also agree with Alex when he says:
Personally, I think [...]
I thought it worth sharing another email I got with regard to Hecklers:
Crikey so that is what the mainstream thinks (well the city powerhouses). Could they not get some normal people on the panel? I presume that would mean less heckling hence no point…
A really tough format. You did well. (Was a bit shocked at [...]
A Norwegian reader asked recently on this site:
Why would a state actively strive to become a tax heaven (as you mean UK is/is becoming) if there are no apparent domestic benefits to it (like tax revenue) or if the benefits outweighs the cost? Why do tax heavens want to attract capital? What do they want?
This [...]
