Ignorance maybe bliss, but it's no excuse
The peasants are revolting as Barclays reveals their 2009 profits and Corporation Tax payments.
I love this quote in relation to Barclays (not in the linked article but available on the Daily Mirror page), "Tax campaigner Richard Murphy argued the Tories’ policy of not taxing the foreign income of multinationals showed it was “hand-in-hand” with the City."
So Barclays not paying taxes on their 2009 income was down to the Tories, remind me again which party was responsible for the 12th March 2008 budget? Barclays situation is down to Gordon Brown's inefficient tax legislation nobody elses, they used the offshore subsidiaries as tax havens, Brown could have closed this loophole many times but chose not to. Nearly everyone of the Top 100 company's in the UK has an offshore subsidiary, the Top 20 have over 2,000 between them.
Of course as Joe Lynam infers there is a moral dilemma here, you pay £113m in Corporation Tax and yet have a bonus pool of £3.4 bn but Barclays aren't supported by the taxpayer, they have the same obligation to their shareholders as every other business, to maximise their dividend payments whilst operating the most tax efficient method of retaining earnings for future investment.
Somebody at Conservative Central Office should be heading this off at the pass whilst offering some words of wisdom regarding future tax legislation about offshore companies and overseas profits.
4 comments:
I wondered about this one too. If Barclays aren't one of the banks that received government support why is there a fuss? Tax loopholes have existed for a long time, haven't they?
Your last apargraph is the key: Labour missing dozens of Coalition own goals and the Coalition missing golden opportunities to stuff Labour...weirder and weirder.
The thing is that banks pay a huge chunk of the total UK tax take anyway (you'd know far more about that than me) so the fine line between pressuring them to take more tax and letting them get away with a fair bit is a fine one. And re Brown, yes a decade to change things, doubling the tax code; is it the most burdernsome in the world?
Shy - I think part of the fuss is that the Government bailout of the other banks created an artificial market which allowed all banks to borrow money at below the normal rates, so Barclays have been indirectly helped by the British taxpayer.
Span - listening to p.m on Thursday night they played David Cameron's speeches to the House of Commons on this subject and he changed his mind within 24 hours of announcing the policy. I think that's why Labour were laughing rather than jeering.
Not sure about being the most burdensome but it is certainly the biggest in terms of legislation, considerably more than 1,000 pages - I believe Turkey has the smallest legislation which last time I looked had reached 28 pages.
My middle paragraph is about the Forests not the banks!
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