{"id":50021,"date":"2020-05-21T09:51:52","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T08:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=50021"},"modified":"2020-05-21T09:59:55","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T08:59:55","slug":"the-snp-voted-with-scottish-tories-against-country-by-country-reporting-yesterday-it-was-not-their-finest-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/05\/21\/the-snp-voted-with-scottish-tories-against-country-by-country-reporting-yesterday-it-was-not-their-finest-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"The SNP voted with Scottish Tories against country-by-country reporting yesterday: it was not their finest hour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Scottish Parliament debated its second Coronavirus Bill yesterday. It was a heated debate, but I am only concerned with two amendments, which were numbers 93 and 94, both proposed by Patrick Harvie, the co-leader of the Greens in Scotland.<\/p>\n<p>Amendment 93 sought to deny bailout funds to companies located in tax havens. It passed, having been worked on jointly for a week or so with the SNP.<\/p>\n<p>Amendment 94 required that companies receiving bailout funds publish country-by-country reports so that it could be ensured that they were not operating in tax havens.<\/p>\n<p>The acrimony of the day, which saw the SNP and Tories aligning on most measures, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parliament.scot\/parliamentarybusiness\/report.aspx?r=12649&amp;i=114462&amp;c=2257235#ScotParlOR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">was reflected on this issue where the voting was as follows<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-50023\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-05-21-at-09.49.07-324x1024.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"324\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-05-21-at-09.49.07-324x1024.png 324w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-05-21-at-09.49.07-95x300.png 95w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-05-21-at-09.49.07-127x400.png 127w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-05-21-at-09.49.07.png 718w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 324px) 100vw, 324px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The same party lines were followed yesterday to vote through many measures that were quite oppressive.<\/p>\n<p>It was not the SNP's finest hour, not least because they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snp.org\/policies\/pb-what-is-the-snp-doing-to-tackle-tax-avoidance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">voted directly against their own tax policy<\/a> which says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We want the UK government to take much tougher action on tax avoidance, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a moratorium and review of the closure of HMRC offices in Scotland and across the UK;<\/li>\n<li>a full and immediate response to the review into Scottish Limited Partnerships;<\/li>\n<li>enhanced protection for whistle blowers exposing tax criminality;<\/li>\n<li>simplifying the UK tax code to close exploitative loopholes such as the Mayfair Loophole;<\/li>\n<li>action to make the beneficial ownership of companies and trusts public;<\/li>\n<li><strong>further measures to improve the transparency of tax paid by major international companies; and<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>new action to tackle international tax avoidance.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If the UK government is unwilling to take the action that is required, they should devolve the powers required to the Scottish Parliament so we can act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have highlighted the relevant parts they ignored yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Scottish Parliament debated its second Coronavirus Bill yesterday. It was a heated debate, but I am only concerned with two amendments, which were numbers<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/05\/21\/the-snp-voted-with-scottish-tories-against-country-by-country-reporting-yesterday-it-was-not-their-finest-hour\/\"><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":[67,26,79,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-accounting","category-country-by-country","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50021","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=50021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}