George Osborne is, apparently, going to introduce what he has always said is impossible, which is a tax on Google's profits resulting from its habit of trading in the UK despite it claiming it has no real link with the country. I welcome that. I'll be keen to see how he does it.
He says the tax will raise hundreds of millions and if successful I would not disagree. But there is good reason for that. Back in 2009 I was the first person to investigate Google's tax abuse of the sort that became well known by 2011 and is know a given fact, worldwide. In that 2009 article I said the loss would be £100 million for just that one company way back then. So George is now doing what I have asked him to do all along in tackling this abuse, which was so easy to spot, but which his own officials have always denied is part of the tax gap (George: please note).
Now it's time he realised where to look when it comes to tax problems to be tackled and took a leaf out of my new report on the issue of where he should go next instead of waiting five years, as seems to be commonplace, next time.
Hat tip just for George: evasion is the next big thing and you have to invest in HMRC to solve it.
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This isn’t about the money, yes the money would be nice. However this is politics which is why he mentioned it and not labour.
But isn’t this against European Law with Google not being resident in the UK? I’m sure you’ve explained it before I can’t see how he can do this. Didn’t France try this with Amazon or one of the others?
Interesting to see how George will ay he is going to do this
I suspect he is clueless
He doesn’t have to do it. For 2015 he only needs to say he is going to do it.