{"id":13257,"date":"2011-12-19T10:47:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-19T10:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=13257"},"modified":"2011-12-19T12:36:25","modified_gmt":"2011-12-19T12:36:25","slug":"are-vodafone-being-just-a-little-defensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/12\/19\/are-vodafone-being-just-a-little-defensive\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Vodafone being just a little defensive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I've\u00a0mentioned<\/a>, the\u00a0Parliamentary\u00a0Accounts Committee is reporting on HMRC tomorrow -\u00a0focusing\u00a0in no small\u00a0part\u00a0on its deal with Vodafone. Yesterday in the Telegraph<\/a> Vodafone put in a pre-emptive response, saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Vodafone\/HMRC settlement was focused on some of the most complex tax legislation anywhere in the world. It involved nine years of legal argument through two independent UK tax authority appeals, three court cases \u2014 before the European Court of Justice, the UK High Court and Court of Appeal \u2014 followed by an application to the UK Supreme Court.\u201d He said this was then followed by \u201ca full and rigorous six-month technical and legal review by HMRC\u201d, leading to the final \u00a31.25bn settlement. \u201cVodafone has no unpaid tax bill in the UK and those who claim otherwise do so without any foundation whatsoever.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now of course the last\u00a0statement\u00a0is true: the matter has been settled by negotiation and no one is saying anything else.\u00a0But the Vodafone statement is a little light on\u00a0detail. First, Vodafone lost the case. They paid \u00a31.25 billion. They paid\u00a0because\u00a0they had sought to avoid tax and did not in the end do so.<\/p>\n

Second, the statement doesn't note that\u00a0Vodafone\u00a0fought this for\u00a0nine\u00a0years and lost. Indeed, as I\u00a0understand\u00a0it at the time of settlement Vodafone's application\u00a0for\u00a0permission to appeal to the House of Lords (or Supreme Court) following HMRC's victory in the Court of Appeal had been rejected. That's how emphatically HMRC was winning the case.<\/p>\n

Third, there seems to be no\u00a0recognition\u00a0of that fact that despite this meaning that Vodafone had no further right of appeal a strange deal was done. Now nothing suggests\u00a0impropriety\u00a0on Vodafone's part as a\u00a0result. I stress that. But it sure as heck suggests something very odd at HMRC, and that's the focus for the attention. That and the fact that, without doubt, Vodafone were trying to avoid tax.\u00a0Which\u00a0makes you wonder why they're so coy at admitting it when they seem to think it's their duty to shareholders to do so.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I’ve\u00a0mentioned, the\u00a0Parliamentary\u00a0Accounts Committee is reporting on HMRC tomorrow –\u00a0focusing\u00a0in no small\u00a0part\u00a0on its deal with Vodafone. Yesterday in the Telegraph Vodafone put in a pre-emptive
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hmrc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}