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 […]
Jim Stewart from Trinity, Dublin gave a fantastic paper at the TJN conference a week or so back showing that Dublin’s International Financial Services Centre is at the heart of the credit crunch but no one is saying so because it’s just a tax haven booking centre where nothing really happens.
Read the paper and appreciate […]
The Irish have a Tax Commission in progress at present. It’s latest mad idea in a country that already seems to believe that tax abuse is source of social benefit is to declare the Gaelic speaking Western Isles as tax havens. As the Irish Independent puts it:
All the Irish islands could become tax havens - […]
I have mentioned, mainly in del.ic.ious comments, the real possibility that in my opinion Ireland might be expelled from the European Union. I was, therefore, intrigued to know that Wolfgang Munchau raised the same issue in the FT this morning. He said:
within a couple of weeks, the chances of Ireland ending up outside the EU […]
I haven’t written about Bono for a while, although what I have written about him remains among the regularly read pages on this blog.
It’s time I did so again. There’s good reason. I know the messages of tax justice have reached the man. I know how they got there. And in the last couple of […]
Private Eye’s dig into Tesco’s tax affairs continues. In the edition published today it has revelation of another tax avoidance scheme, this time based in Luxembourg. I guess that adds variety to the one revealed a fortnight ago in Zug, or the one about which Tesco is suing the Guardian, based in Cayman.
This time, as […]
Aberdeen Asset Management is the latest company to say it might leave the UK, according to the Times.
So, I’ve looked at its accounts. This is the 2007 tax note:
Guess what? Here we have another company threatening to leave the UK that is not only not paying UK tax in 2007, it’s such a seasoned UK […]
Another company that doesn’t pay tax in the UK has announced its results. That’s British American Tobacco.
In 2007 is had profit before tax of £3,078 million. The notional tax charge was £791 million. This was made up of £977 million UK tax, all of which was cancelled by foreign tax credits.
The overseas tax charge was […]
WPP has announced that it’s CEO, Martin Sorrell is to have total remuneration of £21 million this year. Of that £18.4 million will be paid in shares for boosting the share price.
What’s the significance? It’s this. Sorrell has been threatening WPP will move to Ireland to exploit its lower tax rates.
Let me explain why. WPP […]
RTE in Ireland has reported:
Accounts for Microsoft Ireland Research, an Irish subsidiary of the global software giant, show that the company paid just €460,000 in tax, on profits of more than €1.2 billion last year, by using provisions in Irish tax law to take its corporation tax bill down from €158m. Much of Microsoft’s international […]
