{"id":20227,"date":"2013-04-23T06:48:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T05:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=20227"},"modified":"2013-04-23T06:49:10","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T05:49:10","slug":"bill-dodwell-cant-face-both-ways-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/04\/23\/bill-dodwell-cant-face-both-ways-at-once\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Dodwell can’t face both ways at once"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Mail\u00a0published some interesting, but limited data<\/a> on Sunday suggesting the lack of information on which companies\u00a0registered\u00a0on the FTSE 100 do and do not disclose the tax they pay in the UK, and how much\u00a0of the tax those who do make\u00a0declaration\u00a0do pay here (about \u00a31 in every \u00a37, it\u00a0transpires).<\/p>\n

Now I admit I spoke to the\u00a0Mail\u00a0about this research, and am quoted in the\u00a0article, but that's not what\u00a0interests\u00a0me. What does is this quote:<\/p>\n

Bill Dodwell, head of tax policy at accountant Deloitte, said the research showed raw figures didn\u2019t tell the full story. \u2018Unless you have some explanation [around each tax bill] you can\u2019t tell what\u2019s going on,\u2019 he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now that's\u00a0fascinating\u00a0 because you see wat Bill is saying is that because we don't know in which country the companies really make their profit, and also in which country they really pay their tax, and we don't\u00a0have\u00a0a tax note for each country, we shouldn't be commenting on the tax a company pays. Or to put it another way, what Bill Dodwell is saying is that unless and until we have\u00a0country-by-country reporting<\/a> for\u00a0multinational corporations we won't really understand their tax data.<\/p>\n

But now let's look at what Bill Dodwell told the Public Accounts Committee on 31 January:<\/p>\n

Q213 Ian Swales MP<\/strong>: Do you think that global\u2013we are now into the vision part\u2013\u00a0companies should have to report their turnover, profits and tax in each country in their\u00a0reports?<\/p>\n

Bill Dodwell<\/strong>: No, we do not support that.<\/p>\n

Q214 Ian Swales MP<\/strong>: Why would you not support that?<\/p>\n

Bill Dodwell<\/strong>: Really for the reasons that I think many of the chief executives and\u00a0chairman of FTSE 100 companies have covered in their replies to, I think, Stephen\u00a0McPartland. Essentially, they are pointing out the huge cost of it, the complexity and, in some\u00a0cases, the commercial confidentiality, but I do think it is possible to reach a better system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, Bill Dodwell says that we can't\u00a0understand\u00a0tax in\u00a0multinational corporation's accounts without\u00a0country-by-country reporting but at the same time opposes us having\u00a0country-by-country reporting. Now why would that be Bill? Could it be that secrecy suits Deloitte's profit making\u00a0opportunities\u00a0in the many tax havens in which you have an operation really rather well?<\/p>\n

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

The\u00a0Mail\u00a0published some interesting, but limited data on Sunday suggesting the lack of information on which companies\u00a0registered\u00a0on the FTSE 100 do and do not disclose 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":[79,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-by-country","category-deloittes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20227","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=20227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}