{"id":36967,"date":"2017-04-20T08:45:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T07:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=36967"},"modified":"2017-04-20T09:07:55","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T08:07:55","slug":"if-bill-gates-walked-the-talk-hed-be-a-lot-more-credible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2017\/04\/20\/if-bill-gates-walked-the-talk-hed-be-a-lot-more-credible\/","title":{"rendered":"If Bill Gates walked the talk he&#8217;d be a lot more credible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Gates has, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2017\/apr\/19\/lives-at-risk-if-tories-choose-to-cut-uk-foreign-aid-target-says-bill-gates\" target=\"_blank\">according to the Guardian<\/a>, warned '<i>that should the Conservatives go ahead and abandon the UK\u2019s overseas aid spending pledge it would reduce the country\u2019s influence in the world and mean more lives lost in Africa.'<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I agree with him. That is right.<\/p>\n<p>But I think the warning would be a lot more credible if Microsoft tried to pay all its taxes in full in all the countries in which it operates. It does, however, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/business\/news\/microsoft-avoids-paying-100m-a-year-in-uk-corporation-tax-a7089931.html\" target=\"_blank\">still play tax games in Ireland<\/a>\u00a0(and no doubt elsewhere) at considerable cost to the UK, and no doubt many developing countries.<\/p>\n<p>And Microsoft does not do country-by-country reporting so we can truly understand its tax performance.<\/p>\n<p>My messages is simple. Bill Gates needs to walk the talk. Then more people might listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Gates has, according to the Guardian, warned &#8216;that should the Conservatives go ahead and abandon the UK\u2019s overseas aid spending pledge it would reduce<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2017\/04\/20\/if-bill-gates-walked-the-talk-hed-be-a-lot-more-credible\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[19,35,18,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","category-economics","category-microsoft","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36967","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=36967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}