Larry Elliot’s been writing about tax in the Guardian this evening. “Tax,” he says ” threatens to become to the 2010s what debt relief was to the 1990s: the focus of a global campaign for reform”. I thought it already was, but let’s not quibble; the interesting bit is what he goes on to say: In the
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The Observer has been even handed this morning. As well as reporting the efforts to stop global tax abuse it also gave a column to Eric Schmidt, Google’s global Chairman. I have to say he used it to spread misinformation which I feel duty bound to rebut. He opened saying: At a time when families are
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Ed Miliband has adopted the tax justice agenda. According to the Observer this morning: Ed Miliband has vowed to rip up the rule book as prime minister and go it alone if there is no international consensus to tackle multinationals engaging in massive tax avoidance. In an interview with the Observer, the Labour leader urged David Cameron to find agreement at the G8 summit
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The world of tax is in a mess. Google, Amazon and, according to Ernst & Young before the Public Accounts Committee, many more companies are persistently abusing the international tax system to make sure they do not pay tax where it is very obviously due. The person who can deny that tax justice, and the
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Do you remember that Starbucks said they’d pay £20 million if tax voluntarily last year? Well according to Laura Kuennsberg at ITV they haven’t quite got round to writing the cheque yet. As she says: While Google has been squirming in front of MPs, Starbucks has just admitted to me that they have not yet paid any of the millions
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I have posted twice already on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing on Google today, once to anticipate it, and again to summarise some details of what was discussed. This blog is different: it’s a reflection. What did we learn form today’s PAC hearing, since these hearings have no become so pivotal in forming opinion on tax
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I wrote this morning about the issues I expected to arise during this mornings Public Accounts Committee hearing on Google. The hearing has just finished as I wrote. I suspect that of the three parties today Google would do well and HMRC would do worst. I think it was the other way round. Google did badly. Matt
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The Google PAC hearing starts at 9.45am Witnesses: Matt Brittin, Vice President, Sale and Operations, Northern and Central Europe, Google, and John Dixon, Head of Tax, Ernst and Young Lin Homer, Chief Executive and Permanent Secretary and Jim Harra, Director General, Business Tax, HM Revenue and Customs Watch here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=13138

As I described in my ebook, Over Here and Under Taxed, Amazon, like Google, has played a tax game in the UK. It claims its UK operation is run from Luxembourg. Amazon UK merely services it on its behalf, only running the warehouses that supply the goods. Under OECD rules this, they say, avoids them having a
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