PWC in outright denial on falling tax revenues

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Tax Analysts (£) noted yesterday that:

 The OECD's 2013 report "Addressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting" [suggested that] multinational companies are "exploiting legal arbitrage opportunities and the boundaries of acceptable tax planning" to substantially lower their tax burden, harming governments, individuals, and other businesses.

But now, apparently, commentators aren't sure that the OECD's premise that revenue has been lost is correct. Who, you might wonder, could possibly have argued that? It seems that David Ernick of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP did, adding in the process that:

They haven't started with the factual predicate that less taxes have been collected than historically. I think the data that they cite shows that that's not the case.

I guess if you're going to tell a whopper you might as well make it a giant one, because there can be no doubt this is disingenuous, in the extreme, not least because it ignores the fact that around the world there are vastly more corporations that should be paying tax and that profits as a proportion of GDP are rising, and the tax bill should be as  well as a result. But what the heck; why let simple facts get in the way PWC?


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