So three more companies are planning to leave the UK.
Let's as usual set this in context: Charter has not paid UK tax and has no intention of doing so. They are a typical 'free rifer' - wanting to get all the benefits of the UK but wishing to pay nothing for them.
And Henderson and Regus are making clear this is going to make nmo difference to their UK operations.
I have little time to comment - I am lecturing in Canad today - but the issues here are very clear:
a) This will almost certainly have little impact on UK tax revenue
b) This will have little impact if any on UK jobs
c) This has little impact on UK markets
So what is the impact? Simply this: capital is seeking to float free from responsibility. And the big question is the hardest and yet the simplest to answer. Do we want that? Can we afford a global world where a small elite command resources and yet feel no obligation to support others?
The answer has to be an unambiguous no. This is a definition of unethical conduct. It is a clear indicator of a breakdown in society.
International effort needs to be taken to stop this abuse, and to stop the abuse of countries that promote it.
That action will happen.
And we will also get a new tax system as well: unitary taxation with formula apportionment is inevitable if this keeps happening.
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There is a simpler answer to your question “Can we afford a global world where a small elite command resources and yet feel no obligation to support others?” It is to replace all and every tax on work, profit, interest and trade by increasing taxes on land rents, excluding improvements. These rents express the precise monetary benefits that a village, town or city might enjoy and cannot be avoided; if Regus etc. stays a month they only enjoy the benefits for a month They are collected like rates and taxes.
This is an orthodox intervention as explained in our booklet “A Creative Solution to Unemployment and Poverty” at http://www.sacprif.org.
Incidentally Sacprif have started a legal challenge to the Income Tax laws of South Africa because they dampen investment and make unused land unaffordable. Your readers are welcome to become Chartered Members of Sacprif. I hope this is useful, Regards.
I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to offer any comment on the social arguments but on a more basic, or more legal purist, level, I rather wish someone in a position of governmental prominence would tell these companies to shut up or f**k off.
I would have some, if not a great deal of sympathy, with an argument grounded in legal theory; most particularly the lack of certainty present in the current system and the problems this can cause. But this approach is not advanced (and much to the disadvantage of the wider cohort, who are all, and equally, entitled to expect such certainty and prospectivity in any valid tax system).
Rather it seems that the agenda is driven by a misplaced sense of self importance and a cheap media fix. The Big 4 seem to be using their clients to drive those firm’s own agenda are not without blame and, indeed, may be the prime cuplrits in this, quite frankly, rather pathetic agenda which has existed for long enough.
I am not adverse to anyone, from the big corporate to the smallest individual, from loooking to influence policy agenda, but the abuse of this democratic right by the Big 4 and the big corporates (who contribiute not very much relatively speaking to the collective coffers) has reached the stage of being out of all justifiable proportion.