Tax Research UK

BBC News - Cameron says it is time for 'rubber to hit the road' 2010/09/07
David Cameron has returned to work following his paternity leave with a warning to ministers of "significant challenges" ahead.

Chairing the first cabinet since the early summer, the prime minister said October's spending review would be the "time the rubber hits the road".

This is when the government will set out its full spending cuts programme .

The TUC warned Mr Cameron of industrial unrest, with workers facing a "pretty volatile cocktail of issues".
TUC campaign to defend public services from 'volatile cocktail' of cuts » Central Government » 24dash.com 2010/09/07
Workers face a "volatile cocktail" of measures from the Government, including job losses and spending cuts, which could lead to disputes in the coming months, the head of the TUC warned today.

General secretary Brendan Barber (pictured) said there could be some "difficult disputes" ahead in the wake of the public sector wage freeze, continued privatisation of services and pension cuts.

Mr Barber, speaking ahead of next week's TUC Congress in Manchester, announced that a campaign is to be launched calling on the public to join unions in defending public services and jobs which he likened to the bitter row over the poll tax when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

"The poll tax was defeated when government MPs returned to Westminster to report that their constituencies were in revolt. The poll tax offended the British people's basic sense of what's fair. So will the spending cuts.
Biden's Delaware: Making Swiss Banking Look Hyper-Clean by Beat J. Guldimann - The Globalist 2010/09/07
Combined with the lack of disclosure requirements, the "Delaware Gap" — tax gap, that is — has attracted thousands of U.S. and internationally owned corporations to Wilmington. That is somewhat ironic, considering that the state is just a short 1.5 hour car or train ride from the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

For all of the United States’ prosecutorial vigor, owners of Delaware corporations can hide in plain sight — and better yet, avail themselves of the U.S. legal system with impunity.

This is relevant not only in tax matters where the existing loopholes allow for legal tax avoidance. It is disturbingly relevant in the fight against money laundering committed by organized crime and international terrorist organizations.
Labor's Julia Gillard to form minority government in Australia | World news | guardian.co.uk 2010/09/07
Gillard can now continue with her plans to introduce a 30% tax on iron ore and coal miners' burgeoning profits and make Australia's biggest polluters pay for carbon gas emissions.
FT.com / Columnists / Michael Skapinker - Business should speak up for immigration 2010/09/07
Democratic decision-making works best when voters hear both sides. There is no shortage of people complaining about immigration. The case for it should be made by those who stand to benefit – the companies that cannot do without immigrants’ labour and skills. It is time for business leaders to speak up in the press, on radio, on television and to do it every day – not just when one of their staff is denied a work permit.
FT.com / Columnists / Philip Stephens - More than a tale of tabloid skulduggery 2010/09/07
Connect the dots. The heir to the British throne jokes with his brother about a visit to a strip club. A reporter goes to jail. Politicians say their mobile telephones were illegally intercepted. The police are accused of conniving in a cover up.

Throw in calls for the sacking of the prime minister’s communications chief and a media group writing hefty cheques to silence, well, the media, and the picture gets murky. That’s before we run into the rivalry between Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and the Sulzberger family’s New York Times.
FT.com / Comment / Analysis - Russia: Chain retraction 2010/09/07
But the case in Khamovnichesky district court, on a leafy street near the foreign ministry in Moscow, is about more than the fate of two prominent figures to have emerged from Russia’s turbulent transition to capitalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reputation of PwC, one of the world’s biggest audit firms, will also be in the dock this week in the 18-month trial