{"id":20892,"date":"2013-05-21T07:14:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T06:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=20892"},"modified":"2013-05-21T07:14:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T06:14:01","slug":"were-not-just-fighting-big-business-about-tax-were-fighting-for-democracy-and-our-way-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/05\/21\/were-not-just-fighting-big-business-about-tax-were-fighting-for-democracy-and-our-way-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"We’re not just fighting big business about tax: we’re fighting for democracy and our way of life"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian notes this morning that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The bosses of some of Britain's largest multinational corporations have urged\u00a0David Cameron\u00a0to stop moralising and rein in his rhetoric on\u00a0tax avoidance\u00a0ahead of a\u00a0G8\u00a0summit next month.<\/p>\n

Chief executives of companies such as Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone, BAE Systems, Prudential and GSK were keen to take a final opportunity to lobby the prime minister in advance of the meeting of political leaders in Northern Ireland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The action apparently took place during a meeting of Cameron's business advisory group, which he met with\u00a0on Monday.\u00a0Amongst\u00a0those present was the president of the Confederation of British Industry, Sir Roger Carr, who has said tax avoidance \"cannot be about morality \u2014 there are no absolutes\".<\/span><\/p>\n

He's wrong: there are absolutes, and it is most\u00a0particularly\u00a0true that there is no legal, ethical,\u00a0fiduciary\u00a0or any other duty to get round the law - which is what tax\u00a0avoidance\u00a0is. Put simply, seeking to abuse the law in this way - which many\u00a0multinational corporations do - is unethical. That's true in itself: law abiding people do not abuse the law. But it's true at other deeper levels too.<\/p>\n

First, any company doing this knows they shift the burden of tax at this onto someone else. That's free-riding the system.<\/p>\n

Second, this is anti-competitive. Big business seeking to get a\u00a0competitive advantage at cost to small companies is unethical.<\/p>\n

Third, this can't even be\u00a0defended\u00a0by business need. The resulting cash\u00a0surpluses\u00a0are not used to employ people. Big business is simply sitting on massive cash piles<\/a> for which it has no use, but which do inflate director's bonuses (which is what all this is really about).<\/p>\n

Fourth, claiming companies pay VAT and PAYER in exchange is just nonsense, and a knowing fabrication of the truth: these sums are paid by customers and employees.<\/p>\n

And despite all this the CBI is also\u00a0proposing wholly unethical reform processes, as the Guardian notes:<\/p>\n

The CBI boss invited the G8 to consider three points in relation to tax reform:<\/span><\/p>\n

- Avoiding the moral debate \u2014 \"it's all about the rules\".<\/p>\n

- Fixing the rules on an international stage, not unilaterally.<\/p>\n

- Consulting on proposed changes with business.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The argument is:<\/p>\n

1) Ethics have no role in\u00a0business. What are the boundaries to this logic, I wonder?<\/p>\n

2) The state must not act against big business - which is an argument to say democracy has no rights<\/p>\n

3) Business may only be taxed with its consent.<\/p>\n

This is arrogance in the extreme. But it is something much more than that. It is an argument that democracy has no\u00a0place, states have no role, opinion no longer matters, and that the accumulation of\u00a0wealth\u00a0by an elite should be the focus of all policy.<\/p>\n

In that case we have a fight on our hands: it is a fight for our way of life,\u00a0security, principles and system of government, all of which the CBI is set out to destroy.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: this is not just a fight about tax (although it is that). It is a fight about the survival of democracy and self determination in the face of a global elite who want to destroy both.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian notes this morning that: The bosses of some of Britain’s largest multinational corporations have urged\u00a0David Cameron\u00a0to stop moralising and rein in his rhetoric
 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":[16,10,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-tax-avoidance","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892","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=20892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}