From Polly Toynbee in this morning's Guardian:
[Obama] lays into tax avoiders. "There's a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US-based corporations. That's either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world." He promises to close the loopholes and "restore fairness to our tax code". So who rules the Caymans? We do. Who controls more tax havens than any other nation in the world? We do. Let's hope Obama now forces us to shut them all down. Much of the £28bn missing in uncollected UK taxes leaks out here - and 11 years into a Labour government, our tax havens remain untouched.
She's right.
Brown has to do it.
I won't hold my breath.
But I'll tell you: his party is listening to those who say he must.
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Hi Richard,
While I sincerely hope that tax havens will be closed down, Britain is not a dependency of the US.
Can Obama force Brown to do anything at all?
M
M
No, he can’t
But Obama can unilaterally harm tyhese places
And he can puit massive pressure on the OECD to do so – a process which was only stopped by Goerge Bush
Brown will be brave to stand up to Obama right now
R
Richard, you are scaremongering. It simply will not happen. The USA needs to get its own house in order before pointing the finger elsewhere for starters. Obama threats are now being dismissed in the Channel Islands and rightly so,
Obama can spew all he wants. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s controlled by corporate interests. Nader would have done something. Obama’s just swimming luxuriously in the wake “his” campaign created before he has to float back to shore with the prevailing corporate tide. There will be, sadly, no major change in pretty much anything.