The CBI’s report on tax – ‘Tax and British business: Making the case‘ – is a gift that just keeps giving. Look at this table, included in it: I was surprised the effective rate of tax is shown to be so high – just a little below the headline rate. As a result I smelt a rat so I went
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The gross misstatements by the CBI in its presentations, reports and speeches on tax last week just keep coming. Take this claim by John Cridland: The ‘tax gap’ between what should be collected and what actually is has been shrinking in recent years, and only £1.2bn of it is attributable to corporation tax paid by the
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From the Observer today, in its business editorial: John Cridland, the CBI’s nerdy director general, is hardly the man for a punch-up. But in a sunny Westminster conference room last Thursday, he launched what he bullishly called a “fightback”. Just as cabinet ministers have been shamed into offering to tell us about their personal finances,
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It’s time to look at yet another piece of gross misinformation provided by the CBI when launching its new tax report ‘Tax and British Business – Making the Case’ (which it spectacularly failed to do). The CBI claimed: The long view is a revealing one. In 1982-3, the main rate of corporation tax was 52 per cent and yielded tax revenues
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John Cridland said in his CBI tax speech on 19 April when referring to the use of tax havens: But with tax sovereignty must go tax transparency. UK business must – and already does – co-operate with the authorities in these countries to help stamp  out illegal activity. We also recognise the OECD has been doing
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In his speech on tax on 19 April CBI director John Cridland said: We’ve now seen proposals for a General Anti-Abuse Rule, or GAAR. Some have claimed this now has no teeth. On the contrary, the proposals look both proportionate and effective, focused on highly abusive, artificial avoidance schemes which serve no commercial purpose. These
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The CBI said in its tax briefing last week that: Corporation tax paid differs by sector due to sector size, profitability and the availability of tax reliefs – the top 1% of companies pay 81% of all corporation tax, and 60% of small companies pay no CT. This is massively misleading. You’d think from reading
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The CBI made a presentation on tax at David Cameron’s favourite think tank, the Policy Exchange, last week – and made about as many gaffs in doing so as George Osborne did when delivering his budget. And as damagingly for them, they delivered at least as many PR disasters because much of what they said was grossly misleading. I’m going to highlight a
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When John Cridland of the CBI spoke at Policy Exchange this morning he said: “Businesses making use of the tax reliefs the government makes available to them is called tax management. It’s an important function of the business world, along with things such as human resources and financial control. “It’s a dangerous – if sometimes convenient –
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