As Reuters have noted this morning:
State-backed Royal Bank of Scotland is preparing to offload the international arm of its Coutts private bank, separating it from the UK unit, according to a source familiar with the matter.
As they add:
The Swiss arm of Coutts is one of 100-plus Swiss banks who have reason to believe they may have committed tax offences by helping wealthy Americans evade taxes - and are eligible for a non-prosecution agreement if they come clean and face fines.
It's good to know that the government has owned an abusive tax haven operation for almost six years, isn't it?
Why wasn't action taken earlier?
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Ed Balls, please note.
Well maybe the Government having bailed out the bank wanted to generate the best returns – now the Swiss banking model has been dismantled by principally US action, it is no longer required.
Maybe it should have put principle and desire to beat tax abuse first
It is a government after all
Richard, it a government composed of a right wing party with little, or nothing, in the way of moral principles, backed up by a party that jettisoned nearly all it’s principles when it agreed to go into coalition with it.
And as we both know, large numbers of the Conservative party (with some exceptions, to be fair) are believers in the ‘taxation is theft’ doctrine so why expect them to go after tax avoiders and tax evaders with any great degree of enthusiasm?
What action would have been appropriate at the time? Remember the banking group was bailed out with money contributed by the taxpayer.
As I said in 2008, a comprehensive review of businesses to be retained should have taken place and those not needed sold or closed immediately
I am not just saying this with retrospect
“closed immediately” – nice for the people working in them. Or is chopping public sector numbers okay when you think that they are undeserving non-jobbers?
Sorry – lost your thread
Coutts is one of the most significant players in UK film finance and is banker to thousands of film investment vehicles. I understand that it’s wealth management division also sold film investment schemes directly to clients, long after it became a state owned business.
It is interesting that HMRC have since investigated film investment schemes and have concluded that many are abusive examples of tax avoidance. It would be interesting to know whether Coutts sold schemes that have been labelled as abusive. If it were ever demonstrated that a state owned business sold products that undermined the UK tax system, this would be a scandal for both RBS’ management and the treasury.
Of course counterbalancing the argument for a quick sale to dispose of Coutts would be the argument of waiting to ensure the best value was gotten for the beleagured UK taxpayer. And right now couldn’t be a better time to sell (asset prices everywhere are far above 2008)…
For RBS they’re not….
Can I (pedantically I suppose) register mild annoyance at people’s inability to distinguish, when posting replies, between it’s (= ‘it is’) and its (3rd pers. sing. neut. genitive pronoun)? A result of declining standards in our education system, possibly – please don’t prove Mr Gove right!
I note what Alex S. (one of the it’s/its offenders) has to say about Coutts Bank’s role in film finance, film finance being vital if we are to have a film industry in this country. If HMRC have concluded that many film investment schemes are merely egregious and abusive examples of tax avoidance, then it wouldn’t only be RBS and the Treasury that would suffer, but the film industry, and it wouldn’t just be a question of scandal, but of survival, or rather, of _not_ surviving, because I strongly suspect that our film industry wouldn’t. So, for the sake of all the creative talent involved in that industry – the actors, the directors, the screenwriters, the production designers, the film crews, all of them, I hope that HMRC have either got this wrong, or that something by way of alternative and legitimate sources of finance can be provided to sustain film-making here in the UK before it goes to the wall.