Tax avoidance shames Britain

If you read just one thing today make it Polly Toynbee’s article in today’s Guardian entitled Fairness is forgotten in a culture of tax avoidance that shames Britain.

I won’t quote much here – it deserves to be read in full. Suffice with this:

We boast with great arrogance of the pre-eminence of our world-beating City of London, with its probity and professionalism – but others call it a world-beating haven for global world-cheating. Gordon Brown boasted in his Mansion House speech of “our competitive tax environment”, while other see it as the playground for global plutocracy.

That I know to be true.