{"id":19508,"date":"2013-03-11T09:02:48","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T09:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19508"},"modified":"2013-03-11T09:02:48","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T09:02:48","slug":"tax-haven-uk-when-theres-a-company-for-every-16-of-us-but-less-than-one-in-three-of-them-pay-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/03\/11\/tax-haven-uk-when-theres-a-company-for-every-16-of-us-but-less-than-one-in-three-of-them-pay-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax haven UK when there’s a company for every 16 of us, but less than one in three of them pay tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've just\u00a0noticed\u00a0that the number of companies in the UK exceeded 3 million for the first time in\u00a0January\u00a02013, when the total number in existence reached\u00a03,002,521.<\/a><\/p>\n

The UK's\u00a0population\u00a0is 63.2 million<\/a>. I think it's pretty safe to say that 15 million of them are too young to run a company.<\/p>\n

That means there is one company for every 16 adults in the UK.<\/p>\n

In the most recent year for which data is available (2010-11) just 926,000 companies paid\u00a0corporation\u00a0tax<\/a>\u00a0out of 1,203,000 who admitted to having income to HMRC. Neither statistic is surprising:\u00a0as my work has shown<\/a> it's the case that only about half of companies\u00a0submit\u00a0corporation\u00a0tax returns although about 70% are asked to do so (and you might well ask why the rest aren't). Non-compliance \u00a0is now becoming the norm in\u00a0corporation\u00a0tax although\u00a0H M Revenue & Customs don't admit it. It's a voluntary tax in all but name because there just aren't\u00a0enough\u00a0people to police it.<\/p>\n

But that then begs the question, what were all the other companies for? \u00a0The above data includes those making losses, so those making them don't explain the difference. Some companies were dormant of course - about half a million say they are (although no one checks it). But of the rest? Who knows?<\/p>\n

But I will tell you that because the UK's Companies House is so understaffed and its checking so\u00a0inadequate, and because HMRC almost\u00a0never\u00a0seem to pursue missing returns, those companies could be doing\u00a0anything\u00a0from tax fraud to money laundering and human trafficking. And we don't know. And because as a country we don't invest in Companies House and\u00a0H M Revenue & Customs to check we clearly don't care.<\/p>\n

I think the cost could be \u00a316 billion a year in tax lost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the human tragedies<\/a> hidden behind UK company fraud could cost much more.<\/p>\n

It's time we put an end to this tax negligent and\u00a0officially\u00a0condoned tax haven behaviour here in this country, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just\u00a0noticed\u00a0that the number of companies in the UK exceeded 3 million for the first time in\u00a0January\u00a02013, when the total number in existence reached\u00a03,002,521. The
 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":[138,64,14,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companies-house","category-corporation-tax","category-corruption","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19508","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=19508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}