Tweet The latest report from the Public Accounts Committee, published yesterday, really says it all about the tax avoiders. The head of tax for Ernst & Young, one of the UK’s Big Four accountancy firms, admitted that their accountants are seconded to government to draw up tax laws: “I think there are benefits in the [...]
Posts under ‘Taxation’
Dear Ed Balls… why Labour should support my anti-tax avoidance proposals
Apr 17th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Today MICHAEL MEACHER will push again for a stronger anti-tax avoidance regime. Here, he urges the Labour frontbench to support his proposal. Dear Ed, A few months ago I put forward my General Anti-Tax Avoidance Principle Bill (GANTIP) for second reading. As a Private Member’s Bill low in the order it did not make [...]
Ed’s speech and the elephant in the audience
Feb 14th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Tweet Ed Miliband’s speech today is absolutely right to place the emphasis on living standards. The economy is central both to Britain’s recovery and Labour’s political strategy, and it is in their living standards that our people are feeling the impact of the failures of neoliberalism and austerity. The restoration of the 10p tax rate and imposition [...]
Tax avoiders must be prohibited from the NHS
Jan 19th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet Only the Tories would be brazen enough to use the NHS as another source of tax avoidance. But that’s exactly what they are doing, with a report going to Hunt later this month recommending that private companies which have always paid corporation tax and VAT on supplies to the NHS should now be exempted [...]
75% tax on rich rejected – a censure for François Hollande’s policies of pretence
Jan 10th, 2013 by Tom Gill.Tweet (translated from the original by Jacques Sapir) The measure considered to be one of the most emblematic of the promises of François Hollande on tax, the famous 75% rate for people on incomes of over €1 million, was rejected Saturday, December 29 by France’s Constitutional Council. The “Wise Men”of the council, to be clear, [...]
So much for clamping down on tax avoidance, they’re actively encouraging it
Jan 7th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Tweet As Parliament prepares to debate corporate tax avoidance next Monday (7th), the charitable view is that government does the best it can, but is outmanoeuvred and outgunned by all those smart tycoons and multinationals who employ an army of accountants and lawyers to run rings round flat-footed regulators and tax inspectors who are always [...]
When are we going to get serious about corporation tax?
Dec 23rd, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Tweet The debate about tax avoidance has got to move on, and it will move on now that we’ve got a debate on it in the House on 7 January – and not in Westminster Hall, in the Chamber. There has been a huge swell of public anger against the Starbucks, the Googles, the Amazons, [...]
Tax avoidance ought to be as socially unacceptable as drink driving
Dec 19th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.Tweet A thug wearing a suit is still a thug, and a crime is no more acceptable when it is committed by a “respectable” member of society than when it is carried out by what the right-wing press like to think of as the criminal classes. Yet the concept of one law for all, while [...]
Starbucks’ £20m tax ‘donation’ offer is an insult
Dec 10th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Tweet The point about a ‘donation’ is that it is a gift freely given without obligation. What makes it worse in Starbucks’ case is that it is obviously ‘volunteered’ only because the company is fearful, with good reason, that otherwise its trade will be seriously damaged by a widespread consumer boycott, not because it accepts [...]
Over 40 UK Uncut actions target Starbucks over tax avoidance & cuts impact on women
Dec 9th, 2012 by Newsdesk.Tweet Growing public anger at Starbucks was clear yesterday as over 40 of their shops across the UK- including in Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol and Shrewsbury- were targeted by the anti-cuts direct action network, UK Uncut. In central London a creche and women’s refuge were set up in Starbuck’s flagship stores, and in Birmingham people slept [...]
