I was on Newsnight last night discussing the Google tax settlement:
You can watch it here. It was the first item on the programme.
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BBC tax week has been most enlightening!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06wrt2d/britains-trillion-pound-island-inside-cayman
I must watch it
Peretti in Cayman (until Sun 21 Feb – http://bbc.in/1SbzCyH) shocked me primarily by the number of times he kept repeating
“and the same will befall the UK – just you wait and see”.
The point he seemed to be repeatedly trying to make was that the British political class currently in power in the UK wanted to copy the funding model seen in Cayman.
I thought the programme was going to be a tabloid look at offshore tax avoidance, but instead he quickly dismissed how corporations evaporate their taxable liabilities early on, using 3 dinner plates on the beach.
Presumably there wasn’t sufficient material for a whole programme on detailing how corporations quite legally direct their fund flows thru the Caribbean & so more was made of how the UK may similarly slide into the further impoverishment of the poor here while acceding to the every demand from the rich.
I have now watched most of the programme
I know from experience how hard it is to make these
As they go, this one is good. It has got the structure of offshore right: that is key
Why do we here the same thing over and over again that companies legally do these things. There only leagal because the establishment which make laws choose not to make this practice illegal.
Since Paxman has gone I really like Newsnight once again.
I do not think you would have got such a balanced interview on Channel 4 News where the news anchors think the most important stuff is themselves!!
Nice one Richard. You came over very well.
Thank you
Kirsty was charming and went out of her way to be fair
Quite right james s, and now as a result most developed nations are in the same financial mess that the developing nations have suffered for much longer from the same laws. No national company can compete with a multinational in its own market anymore, because there is not just an un-level playing field, there is a different game being played altogether here!
Let’s face it, these laws were developed many years ago by the established financial interests in western “democracies” by their political puppets at a time when exploiting natural resources from poor countries was the main multinational game in town. Do you think it is chance that the UK leads the way in tax havens when we have such a “glorious past” of imperial exploitation all around the world!
The fact the latest breed of primarily US based multinational corporations have used these same laws to fleece the incomes of the developed countries from which they spawned is more than ironic. All immoral activity eventually comes home to roost!
The laws need changing for the benefit of all sovereign nations, not just for the benefit of the developed economies. Multinationals will suck the lifeblood from any country they can if left to their own devices.
There is no way that any domestic economy can survive if the laws of tax competition are not changed (i.e. prevented altogether). It is similar to the climate crisis in that no country wants to be the first to move as it could cause a competitive disadvantage. I see a Global Tax Summit as the only solution.
I fear the world says we have just had such a summit at the OECD
And George Osborne is ignoring it
Just guidelines from the OECD then, not new international laws which must be implemented nationally?
Sounds very much like the shambles of international inaction on climate change!