Shiver me timbers, a billionaire businessman provides the party for billionaires some much-needed succour by attacking Ed Miliband and Labour as a ‘catastrophe for Britain‘. Stefano Pessina, the chief executive of Boots says a Labour government would “not helpful for business, not helpful for the country and in the end it probably won’t be helpful for them”. Why’s that Stefano? “….” Silence. Nothing. The comment is undeveloped. If the Telegraph were reporting something off the cuff, or a line from a press release, that’s just about excusable. This however was a full interview. The hacks pressed him to elaborate but refused to be drawn on specifics. Stefano thereby wasted his opportunity to wound Labour’s pro-business creds in favour of unspecified ad hominem. You might say he Pessed his chance up the wall. Continue reading
Tagged with Tax Dodgers
Osborne sets the debt collectors on little people but ignores fat cat tax dodgers
Osborne unveils the classic Tory way to collect unpaid taxes and fines. Ignore HMRC and DWP which are there precisely for this purpose, but suffer from a fatal disadvantage – they’re in the public sector. So strike a deal instead with a private US-owned company – creating a joint venture with TDX Group, a so-called ‘recovery management’ company whose parent company, Equifax, is based in the US. TDX will have a 75% stake in the new entity, Integrated Debt Services Ltd, with the government holding the other 25%. TDX will get a percentage of any unpaid debts collected beyond the level collected in the last year, though the Cabinet Office won’t reveal what the percentage commission is on grounds of commercial confidentiality, as though this wasn’t a service for the public sector! Continue reading
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Ignore the special pleading of millionaires against mansion tax
We never have had much time for the knocking copy regularly provided by a bunch of has-beens who never backed Ed Miliband in the first place. When things get tough, you can guarantee that they’ll parade their disloyalty through the newsrooms and TV studios. And so it was this weekend that the first pair of traitors – Lords Levy and Noon took their spite somewhere that always welcomes an opportunity to get back at Ed – Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times – and without a hint of irony chose the mansion tax as the stick with which to lash out at Ed.
Under the heading “Labour barons hammer ‘death-wish’ Miliband“, Blairite fundraiser Lord Levy (aka “Mr Cashpoint“) attacked the mansion tax as “totally inappropriate” and having “no validity whatsoever”, warning that the Labour leader had to do more to win over business chiefs whose financial support the party needed. Lord Levy, who made his fortune advising celebrities in the music and entertainment industry how to avoid tax and based his own investment company, Wineart, in a tax haven, owns a multi-million pound ‘hacienda style” mansion in north London complete with with swimming pool and tennis courts (where Tony Blair was a regular partner) so he is hardly without a vested interest. Continue reading
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Now Chuka Umunna accepts £2,500 from tax dodger advisers
As is reported in the Times (£) today, Labour’s shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, accepted and received a fortnight ago a donation of £2,500 for the running of his personal office from chartered tax advisers Signature Tax whose website describes its services as “a progressive tax planning boutique delivering tailored tax solutions to individuals and organisations internationally“.
According to their website, Signature Tax provides specialist advice on off-shore tax arrangements such as those Chuka has previously advised Barclays bank to close down, to clients who are subject to HMRC investigations, and on structures designed to avoid HMRC’s Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes regulations. Continue reading
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Rather than chase internet tax-cheats, the Tories opt to abolish Social Fund for poor
On the same day that it’s announced that the Government is scrapping the £180m a year last resort for the down-and-out and destitute after sudden financial crisis, a new survey shows that the big US internet companies operating in Britain have increased their UK sales last year in the UK by 18%, but paid even less tax to the UK Treasury than the year before,. And the Government has done nothing to stop this: Continue reading
