Thanks to Jo Haynes for sending me the Royal Mint’s accounts for 2011-12. Note 2B on sales is as follows: Now of course the Mint could be printing Euros for Greece. Or is it printing drachmas, just in case?

I’ve long defined tax compliance as seeking to pay the right amount of tax (but no more) in the right place at the right time where right means that the economic substance of the transactions undertaken coincides with the place and form in which they are reported for taxation purposes. I was therefore interested to note
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As Larry Elliott has noted in the Guardian within the last hour, referring to statistics out this morning: In the first three months of 2012, the real spending power of households fell by 0.6% because incomes did not keep pace with prices. That followed a drop of 0.8% in the final quarter of 2011 and
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As the Telegraph reported this morning: HM Revenue & Customs has been handing out hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in the little-known bounty payments as public concern about who pays their fair share has grown. Rewards to members of the public rose by more than a fifth, to £374,000 in 2011-12, compared with the
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The FT’s reported this morning: The Olympics is creating a “ghost town” effect in central London as visitors who would normally flock to the capital’s shops, hotels and theatres stay away, casting doubt on expectations of a short-term economic boost from the games. The games have attracted as many as 100,000 foreign visitors to London – more than
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The FT carries this headline this morning: HSBC says it’s “shameful, embarrassing and very painful” that it has had to do this. The reality is though that this is the comment of an organisation in denial. What HSBC has not recognised is that this is not just the result of errors: these failures are the result of systemic flaws
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“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship,  the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least,  to neglect persons of poor and mean condition  is the great and most universal cause of  the corruption of our moral sentiments.”   Adam Smith (1723-1790) Inequality is divisive and socially corrosive.  For centuries, many people recognised
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Having had a ‘secrecy jurisdiction of the day’ yesterday I thought it worth continuing the theme, with an Olympic twist since I, amongst many others, noted just how many secrecy jurisdictions are participating in the Olympics. The following comes from the Tax Justice Network report on the UK produced to support the Financial Secrecy Index and published on the Secrecy Jurisdictions web site.
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