OK, I accept it's fairly obvious Seamus Milne of the Guardian and I have been talking when reading his column this morning but what the heck? It's good to see this story hitting the media again:
Cameron and Osborne wring their hands at the "moral repugnance" of "aggressive avoidance", but are doing nothing serious about it whatever. They've been toying with a general "anti-abuse" principle. But it would only catch a handful of the kind of personal dodges the comedian Jimmy Carr signed up to, not the massive profit-shuffling corporate giants have been dining off.
Meanwhile, ministers are absurdly slashing the tax inspection workforce, and even introducing a new incentive for British multinationals to move their operations inbusiness to overseas tax havens. The scheme would, accountants KPMG have been advising clients, offer an "effective UK tax rate of 5.5%" from 2014 (and cut British tax revenues into the bargain).
It's not as if there aren't any number of measures that would plug the loopholes and slash tax avoidance and evasion. They include a general anti-avoidance principle (of the kind the Labour MP Michael Meacher has been pushing in a private member's bill) that would outlaw any transaction whose primary purpose was avoidance rather than economic; minimum tax (backed even by the Conservative Elphicke); and country-by-country financial reporting, and unitary taxation, to expose transfer pricing and limit profit-siphoning.
I am we'll aware that we have a government resistant to tax change in the UK right now, but governments always react to change in society and rarely create it. The demand for corporate tax reform is growing now to the point where change will have to happen: that's the key issue here. That, and the fax that the resentment at a government creating 5.5% tax rates for multinational companies will be considerable, and it is such things that persuade people of the commitment of a government to fairness, or not, when voting.
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Thanks for this Richard. My MP, Neil Carmichael has just sent me a letter bigging up the good work the gov’t is doing on this issue. I now have the information I need to push him further on the issue of tax justice.
Go at him!
Richard
Amazing!!!, Heseltine is the man who done everything in his power to destroy the UK manufacturing base/industry, the man who done everything in his power to bring about deregulation and globalisation in so many ways, here we are listening to one who caused the horrific problems we face today…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20142837
[…] Tax Research UK – No government that creates a 5.5% tax rate for multinational companies is co… Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. Tags Corporation Tax, Economic Policy, Economy, Guardian, Tax, Tax Avoidance, Tax Dodging, Tax Policy, Tax Research Uk Categories Uncategorized […]
Tax incidence?
It’s not tax incidence that matters
It’s the incidence of the rent seeking behaviour of the financial services sector that matters – and the fact we all suffer for it
That’s what matters
Ludicrously Cameron and Osborne claim that getting the deficit under control is their top priority but seem to lack the basic understanding of arithemetic that should tell them that if corporation tax receipts go down, the deficit goes up.
Don’t underestimate them.
They don’t lack the arithmetic.
There is little evidence they even care about the deficit (which only exists because their darling financial industry turned-out to be crooks).
And since the deficit is growing anyway their policies are obviously not working too well.
Nothing will deter them from their crusade: To sell as many state assets to their friends and party contributors as they can manage to.
Hey, even when they do that they STILL have to use government money (our money) to bail them out (state subsidise them) because the private company are also useless.
No surprise that Richard Branson is at the front of every queue,