There’s been a lot written about Merrill Lynch International (MLI), but it seems no one has bothered to actually analyse the accounts that include the $16 billion dollar loss. I have. For your convenience they are here, and those for 2006 here.
I’m not for one minute pretending what follows is a full analysis by the [...]
Tax compliance is paying the right amount of tax (but no more) in the right place at the right time where right means that the economic substance of the transaction and the form in which it is reported for taxation purposes coincide.
There’s not one comment I have read on Merrill Lynch booking its US subprime [...]
Here’s another classic from the Institute for Fiscal Studies:
To discourage investors from hiding their wealth in foreign tax havens, the authors recommend exempting interest income from personal tax, and allowing shareholders to deduct an imputed normal return on the basis of their shares before imposing tax on dividends and capital gains.
Based on 2005/06 data this [...]
In really haven’t given the IFS enough attention of late. In June they issued a press release saying this:
Corporation tax should be reformed or replaced by a higher VAT rate (offset by lower National Insurance contributions) to reduce disincentives to invest in the UK, according to two studies commissioned by the Mirrlees Review of the [...]
The Washington Post has reported that:
About two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes annually from 1998 to 2005, according to a new report scheduled to be made public today from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
In 2005, after collectively making $2.5 trillion in sales, corporations gave a variety of reasons on [...]
The follwoing comes from the Greenpeace International website. As I contributed to the report “Conning the Congo” to which it refers, I’m happy to reproduce it here.
Conning the Congo
Just as the need to save the world’s forests for climate protection is becoming widely recognised, we have discovered that major logging companies - operating in the [...]
I missed a letter in the FT last week from Lord Wallace of Saltaire, the Lib Dem peer and former LSE academic. He said (and I have edited a little):
The “anger and alarm” from British-based multinationals you report (”Darling in U-turn on foreign profits tax“, July 21) concerning Treasury proposals for corporate taxation should not [...]
The Treasury has indicated that the current round of consultation on the taxation treatment of foreign profits has come to an end. The reasons have been given in letters to the CBI and 100 Group of Finance Directors.
Many will see this a a back-tracking from the government. Well, I’m quite happy to criticise the Treasury, [...]
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The ICAEW and CIOT have jointly written to the Treasury asking that the current review on the future of UK corporation tax be expanded.
I have no problem with that. Indeed, it is obvious that the scope of the review is too narrow and that the range of participants is too limited.
But I do have a [...]
I expect to find File of 4 on Tuesday 15 July very interesting. The trailer says:
Profits before poverty?In 1948, the post-war Labour Government set up the Colonial Development Corporation, a tax-payers’ fund to promote industry and agriculture in the poorest parts of the Empire.
Sixty years on, today’s Labour Government denies suggestions that it wants to [...]
