The Daily Mail has covered the new TJN report on unitary tax and how it would impact on HSBC and Barclays. And, in the process they've got feedback from both banks.
According to the Mail:
A spokesman said: ‘HSBC paid £6.1billion in tax globally last year, which demonstrates that we do not employ a strategy to avoid UK or other taxes. The £1billion paid in the UK puts us amongst the highest tax payers in the FTSE 100.'
When will these banks learn it is not size that matters? They did, however stick to something like the facts. As the Mail notes:
A Barclays spokesman said: ‘The figures cited by the Tax Justice Network are based on an erroneous comparison between turnover and corporation tax, and are also further undermined as they fail to recognise significant other UK taxes paid by Barclays including the bank levy. By way of illustration, Barclays was recently ranked as the fourth highest tax contributor in a PwC survey of the “Hundred Group”, which includes most of the UK's largest companies.'
Oh dear, Barclays. No we didn't compare turnover and tax; we compared economic activity and tax, which is something entirely different. And we didn't note the Bank levy as we were looking at corporation tax and no-one said the bank levy was an alternative to it. As for the PwC work, well this comes from the world of fantasy accounting, where the sole aim is to add up all cheques payable to H M Revenue & Customs even if (in the case of VAT) the customers are actually paying the tax or in the case of PAYE the employees are, and then suggest as a result that for some none too obvious reason that less corporation tax should be due. We rumbled that a long time ago - even if John Whiting its inventor, has got a seat on the board of H M Revenue & Customs for creating this massive source of misinformation.
The fact is that neither HSBC or Barclays have addressed the issue. Perhaps they might like to explain why they aren't paying a fair share of their tax in the UK. That's what we asked. And that's what we need an answer to.
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Surely the question on “fair share of taxes” is one for the designers of government tax policy – not the corporations that comply with the fiscal law.
There are as many people who believe that Barclays and HSBC are paying their fair share as there are who think they are not.
Frankly, we either have the rule of law or we don’t – the “fair share campaign” is outside the rule of law.
And so I am asking for a change in the law
Is it that hard to understand the objective of this?
If you’d had your logic prevail we’d still have slavery
So, these firms are ‘guilty’ of something that does not even exist?
They are avoiding tax
That’s clear from the evidence
What we need is to change to system to stop it
How do you reconcile asking for a change in the law on the one hand to accusing HSBC and Barclays of tax avoidance by complying with the very laws you believe to be inadequate. Seems your beef is with the system and not the taxpayer.
You are asking for HSBC and Barclays to comply with laws that don’t exist.
Of course my beef is with the system
And with commentators like you who persistently waste my time
Please don’t bother again
But if the system of unitary taxation is not law but a proposal, how could the banks operate it? If they paid additional amounts would not that be exactly the same ad Starbucks making its “voluntary” payment?
We’re demonstrating:
a) a problem
b) profit shifting
c) that change is needed
And actually – reform is possible even under existing OECD rules
How are you showing (b) when the overall group tax charges are high (above the prevailing UK rate)? It’s hard to imagine they have a strategy to move taxes from the UK into higher tax regimes.
On (c) why is it fair that a larger proportion of profits will be effectively taxed twice(once by the jurisdictions operating their current system and then again by the UK operating a unilateral Unitary tax system).
On (a) more problems will be created than solved.
You seem to have no clue about unitary tax so go read and then come back again with better questions
There seems to be a policy of “cut and run” with the HMRC happy to let it happen.
“HMRC happy to let it happen”
HMRC just do what they’re told to do, and it isn’t the government telling them nowadays. Not the elected one anyway.
Have you noticed who runs HMRC now?