Accountancy Age has reported that the Government is to produce a taxpayer’s charter.
I would like to think that it will look like this:
A Code of Conduct for Taxation
Objective
This Code of Conduct relates to the payment of taxes due to a State or other appropriate authority designated by it.
Scope
This Code applies to:
1. Governments and their agencies […]
In December the Guardian reported that:
Gordon Brown plans to harness at least 20 of the world’s biggest multinational companies, including Google and Vodafone, to tackle a “development emergency” in the world’s poorest countries and put the international community back on course to achieve seven UN development goals by 2015.
As a UN report released today shows […]
Tax Commissioners from OECD and non-OECD countries meet to discuss how to enhance the relationship between revenue bodies,taxpayers and tax intermediaries
Cape Town, South Africa
10-11 January 2008
South Africa will host the Fourth meeting of the OECD’s Forum on Tax Administration in Cape Town on 10-11 January 2008, bringing together more than 130 participants from around 40 […]
It’s a fact that we cannot do without taxes. That’s because we cannot do without government. And we cannot do without markets either, at least in the world as we know it. The relationship is symbiotic: governments provide the structure in which markets can work: markets need government as their insurer of last resort: populations […]
Martin O’Neill has a thoughtful piece in the New Statesman on the problems of corporate taxation.
Inspired by the article in the Guardian on bananas, he says:
A corporation which shirks its minimal commitment to uphold the basic rules of society, including its taxation rules, fails to earn its justification for existing, and is in need of […]
The FT has reported that:
The Indian government on Wednesday scored an early win in its efforts to force Vodafone to pay what lawyers estimate could be $2bn in capital gains tax on its acquisition of domestic mobile phone operator Hutchison Essar this year.
As the FT notes:
The case involves Vodafone’s $11bn acquisition of a controlling stake […]
On Friday the Isle of Man confirmed the story trailed here on 16 October that its tax system, which it claimed complied with the requirements of the EU Code of Conduct for Business Taxation, has failed to secure the approval of the European Commission. As the Isle of Man press release on the issue said:
The […]
Accountancy Age featured the following article by me this morning on its editorial pages (link to follow):
Tax has always been close to the accountant’s heart. Once it was simple: the only questions were how much tax was due and what, if anything, might be legitimately done about it.
But as with everything else over the last […]
The Tax Justice Network and Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs have today published a Code of Conduct for Taxation that I have written on their mutual behalf.The Code of Conduct is just 2 pages long. It has six headings, each of which contains three statements of principle. In combination, these present what we hope […]
The UK’s Chartered Institute of Tax ran a conference on the above theme on Tuesday. I was one of the speakers. My slides are here for those interested. They give a reasonable overview of what I said.
What was interesting was the convergence of ideas. Dave Hartnett, Director General of HMRC stole some of my themes […]
