More tax giveaways to big business

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The FT has the following headline in an email this morning:

Screen Shot 2014-04-30 at 09.21.00

 The article itself says:

The patent box applies a 10 per cent tax rate to the portion of the company's profits that can be attributed to the patent, instead of the normal rate of 21 per cent. To qualify, the company must have invented the patent or perform “significant management activity” relating to its development. The patent must have been granted by a European patent office.

But that was not enough to keep Pfizer in Sandwich, kent, in 2011 - when it shut its operation employing 1,600 people there. And as the article also notes of the patent box:

The Institute for Fiscal Studies [has] argued that it was poorly targeted, expensive and would fail to foster innovation. The EEF, the trade body for the engineering sector, initially described it as an “expensive, inefficient and ineffective giveaway”.

Assume it's a giveaway then.

Another to add to Osborne's list of gifts to big business.


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