{"id":18802,"date":"2013-01-04T15:42:27","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T15:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=18802"},"modified":"2013-01-04T15:42:27","modified_gmt":"2013-01-04T15:42:27","slug":"if-anyone-lacks-moral-scruples-on-tax-avoidance-it-is-david-cameron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/01\/04\/if-anyone-lacks-moral-scruples-on-tax-avoidance-it-is-david-cameron\/","title":{"rendered":"If anyone lacks moral scruples on tax avoidance it is David Cameron"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph has reported today that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Foreign companies like Starbucks and Amazon which have avoided paying large corporation tax bills in Britain lack \"moral scruples\", David Cameron has said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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The Prime Minister said he was going to make \u201cdamn sure\u201d that foreign companies like Starbucks and Amazon which have been found to avoid legally paying a large corporation tax in the UK paid their fair share.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is\u00a0risible.\u00a0Firstly, the\u00a0government\u00a0is taking no steps to challenge these companies. The\u00a0General Anti-Tax Avoidance Principle Bill<\/a> that\u00a0Michael\u00a0Meacher MP put before the House\u00a0of\u00a0Commons and which I\u00a0drafted\u00a0would let them do that, but the\u00a0government\u00a0has opposed it.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0government's\u00a0own\u00a0general anti-abuse rule<\/a> specifically does not challenge normal commercial\u00a0arrangements\u00a0and tax planning - which no\u00a0doubt\u00a0these are. So we can say with certainty that nothing will happen to recover this tax based on current\u00a0proposals.<\/p>\n

What we can also say is that far from making this sort of abuse easier the\u00a0government\u00a0is\u00a0encouraging\u00a0it. The territorial basis for UK taxation that it has adopted<\/a> - which\u00a0means\u00a0the UK now\u00a0turns\u00a0a blind eye to and does not tax the\u00a0earnings\u00a0of\u00a0multinational corporations arising outside the UK - means that every encouragement is now being given to every UK based company to shift their earnings out of the UK just as\u00a0Starbucks, Amazon and Google are doing. They can then ship\u00a0them\u00a0back in from\u00a0whichever\u00a0tax haven the relocate the profit to tax free. Tax abuse does not get simpler than that and it is all happening with the\u00a0encouragement\u00a0of this\u00a0government\u00a0 So far from tackling this abuse, Cameron's\u00a0government\u00a0is doing its utmost to encourage and spread it.<\/p>\n

Third - the UK is asking the OECD at ways to tackle this issue. It has given it just \u00a3120,000 to do so<\/a>. I think we can safely tell from that how serious he is.<\/p>\n

The man is a complete hypocrite. If any lacks moral scruples on this issue it is David Cameron. And we're all paying more tax as a\u00a0result, and it's his fault.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph has reported today that: Foreign companies like Starbucks and Amazon which have avoided paying large corporation tax bills in Britain lack “moral scruples”,
 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":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporation-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18802","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=18802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}