This from Dina Medland on Forbes today:
In Britain, 70% of people don't want their money invested in unethical businesses and 65% think corporate tax avoidance is unethical — more than those who think pornography or arms dealing is unethical, according to a survey conducted by Abundance, an ethical investment platform.
Its Great British Money Survey was conducted amongst 2,000 nationally representative UK adults in May 2015 by the independent research company One Poll.
The finding is now being repeated time and again.
Time for the FTSE to listen.
Time for them to sign up for the Fair Tax Mark.
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The actual question in the survey was;
“If a company was involved in the following activities, would you consider it to be an unethical organisation?….
…Companies that avoid tax obligations”
Which seems a rather confusing way to put a question if the questioner is after a finding on attitudes to tax planning.
A company has an obligation to file a tax return and who could say they would approve of a company that didn’t fufil that obligation? I’m surprised given the way the question was ‘loaded’ that only 65% said ‘yes’. 22% said “don’t know/don’t care”.
Just goes to show that surveys can be dafted to produce just about any result the surveyer wants.
Except that however worded this finding is now found
Sorry – but you’re just seeking to be a persistent apologist for abuse
Goodness me.
We’ve just had one of the harshest lessons about the limitations of polls delivered by the election result and here we are looking at polls again to give us hope.
My trust in polls was not high before the election and is even less now (are many polls victims of the Hawthorne effect or other stimuli that distorts what people are really thinking?) .
People change their minds very quickly – public opinion is dynamic and always contextual. Would the same number of respondents still think that tax avoidance is unethical if you gave them comparative rates of return between unethical and ethical tax practices when you asked such a question?
I’m worried that such polls portray what maybe the mirage of a reservoir of ethical people out there wanting ethical financial products waiting to be found by the market when in fact there are not that many in reality.
I speak as a true sceptic – I’d like to believe it were so but I require a higher standard of proof I’m afraid to be convinced. During the election it was the exit polls who picked up the reality as they revealed what voters had actually done – not what they had (perhaps) intended to do.
The thing to remember is that those of us who believe that business should not avoid taxes still have to go on saying say why this should not be and polls like this might be underestimating the full extent of the task! We still have to win the argument (arguments I’m looking forward to resourcing from your next book perhaps?).
One of the web petition organisations is claiming that Osborne is planning to sell off RBS-and make a loss on the deal. The organisation is The sum of Us and they claim he would lose £13 billion on the sale-at a time he is talking about a further £12 billion in social security cuts. This seems so unethical than I wonder if it can be correct?
Why not?
He is only interested in cash in – not book values
Whatever a polls outcome is, if the facts were able to be digested by the majority of people, I believe the percentage’s would be much higher. If they weren’t it would be extremely worrying.