It needs a far simpler system which would be fair to all. Simply, if you pay tax in another jurisdiction that should count towards your tax in the UK. i.e. if the tax due for earning the same money in the UK is greater, you should have to pay the balance to the UK tax authorities. I am ExPAT for tax reasons because I have to be. I pay as much tax in the Congo as I would be liable for here ($58.5 k in the Congo against $57.6k if I was resident here and didn't pay tax in the Congo. However, if I were to be resident here but still paid taxes in the Congo it would cost me an extra £34k because there is no off set of tax paid in the Congo. I would end up paying over 60% in tax and NI, which is madness. In the event of a pay rise or if I cashed in a few shares at a profit, I would continue to pay tax at a flat rate of 30% in the Congo but in the UK it would be 42% rising to 50% if my salary exceeded £150k. I would quite happily pay the difference to the UK authorities but no way am I paying twice, so I have to remain ExPAT. The system I suggest would penalise the fat cats earning in excess of £250k, or less if it was earned in a low tax/tax free jurisdiction, but be much fairer for normal people like myself.
For me, the major problem is corporate, not personal tax. This is where a Gvt is losing the most revenue. If piss takers like, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc are made to pay an equitable amount of tax on their UK earnings, it would go a long way towards sorting out some of the problems with public finances.
The irony is that if the industrial scale avoiders paid more tax, then a govt that is gathering more than it needs in tax to run the nation can by definition REDUCE corporation tax etc. And lower CT is what "Big business" are always whining about anyway. On this matter IMHO there is also a related "truth that dare not speak its name" . Which concerns the fundamental nature of a business anyway. All business endeavours to have compelling products/services that everyone wants, and is created at the lowest sustainable costs. That is how profit is made. But for any business, if any reasonable profit made is not actually being achieved by the above but via industrial-scale tax avoidance, then the business is actually not doing well at all. The profits are a lie, and the major shareholders in a business should be acting. Similarly, if the major shareholders are greedy for dividends that a business cannot generate unless it does industrial-scale tax avoidance, then they are a big part of the problem.
This goes back to the Blair era, as various large corporations (notably Vodafone) paid a fraction of what they owed in tax - yet the justification from Bliar was that if they had to pay more tax, even though that was the tax they owed, they would leave the country. So typical of the easy ride the press gave Blair that nobody pointed out several other countries have tax rates that are just as high and expect those same corporations to pay in full, and they did not shut up shop and move somewhere else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates The UK has been good enough as far as tax regimes go. As for the threat to leave, someone needs to call them all on it. What are Vodafone going to do ?? Even assuming the radio interface for 5G is good, they are not going to be providing coverage over London from base stations sited in Lichtenstein.
Blair saying they'd leave made no sense: corporations exist to make money, so did he honestly expect that people would believe they would rage quit the UK market when these same corporations have no issue paying a much higher tax rate in the US, Japan, Germany, France and numerous others? In terms of Cameron giving corporations an easy ride, the worst case has to be Amazon: he accepted their explanation of their warehouses all being in Ireland so they'd have to pay a lower rate, yet I passed their depot outside Slough enough times when heading down the M4 to know that's bullshit. What makes this even worse for Cameron's hopes of being deemed mentally competent is that Amazon's careers website full admits to several warehouses being based within the UK: http://amazon-operations.co.uk/locations?location=uk
UK politniks appear to be the only ones who are stupid enough to believe the threats, even though there is no basis in commercial reality for most industry sectors. Yeah, right. Why doesn't he ask his pals at Royal Mail what the current annual parcel shipping volumes are from Ireland to the UK ?? The only problems now tax-wise are the "virtual" service providers (Google etc) , of which there will be increasingly more.
A couple of years ago Osbourne had a nice trip to enjoy the Mediterranean weather in Gibraltar just so he could make sure that Ladbrokes' servers were all there, just to make sure they didn't have to pay the 10.75% of their profits that they owe, as moving offshore means that they, William Hill and Coral all pay 7-8% of their profits in tax. What he neglected to check was whether Ladbrokes were willing to pay the 7-8% - instead they all turned around and told the Jockey Club they'd get 5% or they can piss off. The absence of Ladbrokes from the courses at Cheltselfharm says all you need to know about the answer they received.
Reading the stories about the culture secretary being in a relationship with a professional dominatrix, I have to say that I am appalled …that the far more important story of David Cameron’s tax dodging has vanished from the front pages the moment this story quite conveniently broke.
Nicked from HIGNFY's Facebook... 'Obama hypocrite for telling UK what to do,' writes Boris Johnson in paper owned by Australian-born US citizen who tells UK what to do.
As diametrically opposed as the politics of George Osbourne and Ken Livingstone may be, they share one thing in common - they're both utter t***s
The Republicans have really outdone themselves this time. Ted Cruz, the theoretically reasonable alternative to Mussolini on a bad hair day, was just called "Satan (edit) LUCIFER in the flesh" by one of the most prominent members of his party, a former speaker of the House. It's very unfair to Lucifer.
I'm sorry, really. But to those of us over here it's like some circus comedy show. It's unbelievable and unbelievably scary to think that a narcissistic egomaniac, like Trump, could actually be elected president of the USA. I couldn't believe it when the idiot son of Bush was somehow elected, but Trump would far outdo even that lunacy.
