Third. Like all the options that aren't May's Deal or No Deal......
I think we can safely say that no deal is now behind at least some of those.
Yes, with Bercow going rogue I think the chances of No Deal have shrunk considerably
Ignoring the necessity or otherwise of an A50 extension, my odds now are:
2nd vote: 40% TMay’s Deal: 30% No Deal: 15% Revocation. 10% Black Swan/Meteor Strike: 5%
I’d be intrigued by other PBers’ ranking odds on Brexit outcomes
The alternatives are not mutually exclusive so the odds should add to more than 100%.
2nd vote can also result in May's deal or No deal.
I suggest
2nd vote 10% May deal 50% No deal 50% Revocation 5%
Let's talk about this as two markets:
First, as the ultimate outcome of this A50 process, as of the date that the A50 process ceases to apply:
Substantively May's deal - 35% A different deal (i.e. one already assuming a different FFA destination) - 15% No deal - 15% Remain - 35%
A multitude of different things can then happen after A50: trade talks take a different direction, change of government, a revokation simply being a reset and the route to a different Brexit path being sought, rejoin, EFTA, but really that is all probably beyond sane pricing.
Then there are different things that can happen on the way to exiting A50 that can be priced independently as specials: Extension - 40% A second referendum of some form - 40% (you could break down further) A change of government - 20% Etc (That these add to 100 after my finger in the air numbers is entirely coincidental)
Unfortunately those same outcomes are likely if we proceed to inflict tremendous damage on the country based on a one-off narrowly won vote that had no proposition, spelled out few of the consequences, and ended up worsening rather than resolving many of the grievances that drove the vote in the first place.
No they really aren't. In the wake of the vote, the vast majority of people in this country accepted that the referendum was legitimate and should be accepted including most of those who voted Remain. They may not have particularly liked it but they were willing to accept the result.
The consequences of MPs deciding to ignore that result because they didn't agree with it, either by asking us to vote again or by simply revoking would be catastrophic. As was pointed out earlier in the thread it would show that MPs regarded themselves as our masters not our servants. The 'we know better than you' meme is putting the final nail in the coffin of Parliamentary Democracy. That is your legacy if Brexit is prevented.
The reason we are in this situation is because Parliamentary Leavers are not willing to compromise either with reality or with Remainers. If Parliamentary Remainers push through May's deal they will be accused of treason and subverting democracy anyway, so why shouldn't they do what they will be accused of regardless?
What has Bercow done that’s so egregious? He’s allowed parliament to put a firecracker up Theresa’s jacksie. This is a bad thing why?
This is one of those (increasingly common) occasions where you want both sides to lose.
You are right that May is getting what she deserves for trying to circumvent Parliament. So the outcome is beneficial and welcome in the short term.
But by throwing away both precedent and legal advice and doing it in the way he has, Bercow had fatally undermined the neutrality of the Speaker's position and ensured it will be a far more political and far less balanced office in the future. He has done real and permanent damage to Parliament.
The operation may have been a success but the patient has died.
I disagree that (in this case) he has undermined the neutrality of the Speaker's position - or at the very least that is not proven. The Speaker is not expected to be neutral between Parliament and the executive - and on this point he has the support of MPs from Clarke to Rees Mogg.
That he has undermined precedent is a far stronger argument against him (and is where Mogg, for example, parts company with him).
The price the EU will exact for supporting Ireland on the backstop is the harmonization of EU corporate tax. That much is clear. Dublin is in for a shock.
I suspect that will be offset by being the only English speaking country left in the EU
Malta is basically English speaking. 88% are fluent. In Holland fully 93% of people claim to speak English. And Sweden can’t be far off.
Ireland’s advantage, in this case, is minimal and dwindling.
The language question is an interesting one, given English's wide usage within EU institutions. Each member gets to nominate an official language for EU recognition - because the UK has English, Ireland nominated Gaelic and Malta nominated Maltese. Formally at least Brexit should push one of them to switch.
If they don't switch, it gives the EU the option to adopt English as a neutral common working language (which would only reflect the reality anyway). That would enable countries to continue to work in it without having to notionally give one member a notional advantage.
Certainly that would be a pragmatic solution. More so than Esperanto, anyhow.
On a purely pragmatic level, the Presidents of the organs of the EU all speak fluent English, so it's useful as the informal baseline for chats that don't need to go through the Union's translation machinery.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
You’re not a politician, are you?
You’ve be dragged from your chair within days if you tried to do that.
And rightly so. The practical, let alone political consequences of those ideas would be horrific. Edmund must really hate the poorest in society to want to add 20% to their basic bills overnight.
Read the third one. (Also add tax credits etc for the same purpose.)
It's true that as a proportion of income poor people spend more on zero-rated stuff than rich people, but they don't spend nearly as much stuff per head in absolute terms, and most people aren't poor, so you collect many times more revenue than the amount the poor are paying and you can give them that and then some with more targetted methods.
How does a steeper income tax curve help those who already pay no income tax? All you are doing is facing essential purchases whilst doing nothing to alleviate those additional costs for the poorest.
The price the EU will exact for supporting Ireland on the backstop is the harmonization of EU corporate tax. That much is clear. Dublin is in for a shock.
I suspect that will be offset by being the only English speaking country left in the EU
Malta is basically English speaking. 88% are fluent. In Holland fully 93% of people claim to speak English. And Sweden can’t be far off.
Ireland’s advantage, in this case, is minimal and dwindling.
The language question is an interesting one, given English's wide usage within EU institutions. Each member gets to nominate an official language for EU recognition - because the UK has English, Ireland nominated Gaelic and Malta nominated Maltese. Formally at least Brexit should push one of them to switch.
If they don't switch, it gives the EU the option to adopt English as a neutral common working language (which would only reflect the reality anyway). That would enable countries to continue to work in it without having to notionally give one member a notional advantage.
Certainly that would be a pragmatic solution. More so than Esperanto, anyhow.
On a purely pragmatic level, the Presidents of the organs of the EU all speak fluent English, so it's useful as the informal baseline for chats that don't need to go through the Union's translation machinery.
Nice to see a tax article - thanks @alanbrooke - and the linked Guardian piece is also well worth a read.
I think the point about concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals using secrecy jurisdictions is well made but the link between that issue and the taxation of large MNCs is perhaps more tenuous. There has been a massive amount of work on international corporate tax transparency and anti-avoidance in the last decade, mostly under the auspices of the OECD but with the U.K. typically one of the early adopters, sometimes implementing stronger measures than required. The complexity of tax compliance for a U.K. subsidiary of a multinational group has increased perhaps threefold in that time because of (for example) the need to consider interest deductibility requirements and anti-hybrid legislation which frequently depends on understanding on how transactions will be taxed in other countries in order to comply with U.K. legislation. Other broadly drafted rules like the diverted profits tax make it a lot harder to be certain of how normal commercial cross-border transactions will be taxed. Transfer pricing requirements are far more onerous and country-by-country reporting has also increased transparency (and work).
I’m not suggesting these rules are a bad thing, but it’s difficult to see that this is an area where politicians have avoided addressing the issues. It would be interesting to hear suggestions of further changes to the corporate tax system which would make a significant difference, short of moving towards a single European/global consolidated corporate tax base, which is generally seen as too much of a surrender of sovereignty to contemplate.
As @edmundintokyo points out, looking at individual income, wealth and consumption taxes is probably the best bet.
Didn't Osborne float the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule [GAAR]? They work well in many countries, but are maybe a bit despotic and arbitrary for British tastes.
Personally I'd go for it. Would put a lot of lawyers out of work for a start, and that has to be a good thing.
He really hasn't. What happens when no can-kicking option achieves a concensus?
Tuesday: meaningful vote fails. Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for 2nd ref fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for exiting with no deal fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for pivoting to Norway+ fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for revoking A50 fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for extending A50 fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for a new election fails Monday: vote on May's plan B fails. Tuesday: vote of no confidence fails.
We will, however, have made some kind of progress, because we'll be able to see the numbers on all the different possible Plan Bs, and for the first time Parliamentarians will have a clear idea of what sort of ways out of this mess are most likely to be able to command a majority in the House.
Possible plan C or D will stand a chance of finally commanding a majority in the house.
If that happens then it's No-Deal.
Remember No-deal is not a choice, it is a consquence.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
You’re not a politician, are you?
You’ve be dragged from your chair within days if you tried to do that.
And rightly so. The practical, let alone political consequences of those ideas would be horrific. Edmund must really hate the poorest in society to want to add 20% to their basic bills overnight.
Almost all of it would totally screw over the little guy. It’s classical “radical centrist” Davos style globalist stuff that myopic numbers driven economists obsess over but would also let the big corporations off the hook.
He’d make Macron look like Watt Tyler.
The big corporations are already off the hook, that's the whole point of the thread. I mean, you can play whack-a-mole if you like but there's limit to how much mileage you'll get out of it.
On the other hand, taxing rich people for living in the nice places where they want to live in whatever way is hard to avoid it is totally practical and there are lots of ways to do more of it.
PS If you're opposing taxes on land value and the huge unearned capital gains by people living in expensive houses, you don't sound very convincing when you say you're doing it to defend "little people".
Unfortunately those same outcomes are likely if we proceed to inflict tremendous damage on the country based on a one-off narrowly won vote that had no proposition, spelled out few of the consequences, and ended up worsening rather than resolving many of the grievances that drove the vote in the first place.
No they really aren't. In the wake of the vote, the vast majority of people in this country accepted that the referendum was legitimate and should be accepted including most of those who voted Remain. They may not have particularly liked it but they were willing to accept the result.
The consequences of MPs deciding to ignore that result because they didn't agree with it, either by asking us to vote again or by simply revoking would be catastrophic. As was pointed out earlier in the thread it would show that MPs regarded themselves as our masters not our servants. The 'we know better than you' meme is putting the final nail in the coffin of Parliamentary Democracy. That is your legacy if Brexit is prevented.
I don't think we are in a position to make such bold assumptions, until we have better idea of the real impact, assuming it ever happens.
Oh, I think we are.
We are heading for a "Who governs the UK - MPs or voters?" election. That will a blood-bath for those MPs who think they do.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
You’re not a politician, are you?
You’ve be dragged from your chair within days if you tried to do that.
And rightly so. The practical, let alone political consequences of those ideas would be horrific. Edmund must really hate the poorest in society to want to add 20% to their basic bills overnight.
Almost all of it would totally screw over the little guy. It’s classical “radical centrist” Davos style globalist stuff that myopic numbers driven economists obsess over but would also let the big corporations off the hook.
On topic, we need a turnover tax. Tax businesses on their topline on all activity (above a threshold) within a tax territory. For the purposes of online transactions, the physical location should be regarded as the location of the place where: 1. the service is to be performed; 2. the good is to be delivered
So if I am ordering a sweatshirt from a Thai manufacturer, via an Irish-registered company on a US-based server, while I'm on holiday in Spain (I'm not, just in case you're wondering), the supplying company still pays the tax to the UK exchequer because the sweatshirt will be delivered to an address near Wakefield.
Isn't the problem with a turnover tax that it penalises those companies with very low profit margins on very high turnover (and in many cases would make them unsustainable) whilst allowing low turnover companies with very high profit margins to get away with paying very little tax?
Low turnover companies will pay very little tax anyway, and some of the loophole will likely be recouped through income tax.
As for high-income / low-profit companies, yes, they would have to increase prices but that would be an industry-wide thing they'd face so it's likely that they wouldn't suffer any material disadvantage (some, operating in the luxury / leisure / discretionary areas might find the size of their industry's cake shrinking but I don't think the overall effect would be big, when set against alternative means of raising the same revenue).
So you want Goldman Sachs to pay hardly any tax and Sainsbury's to pay a vast amount?
I assume that Goldman Sachs have a reasonably large turnover given the size of their profits. And GS employees will be taxed at pretty much 50%, so there's another tax receipt there.
As for Sainsbury's, yes, why not? But also Amazon and other online giants who are supplying enormous services within the economy. There would, presumably, need to be a very tight definition of who the supplier is.
On a different but related note, I've long thought that there needs to be an investigation into the size of fees and profits at investment banks, which market forces should in theory bring down but which never in practice seems to happen.
The price the EU will exact for supporting Ireland on the backstop is the harmonization of EU corporate tax. That much is clear. Dublin is in for a shock.
I suspect that will be offset by being the only English speaking country left in the EU
Malta is basically English speaking. 88% are fluent. In Holland fully 93% of people claim to speak English. And Sweden can’t be far off.
Ireland’s advantage, in this case, is minimal and dwindling.
The language question is an interesting one, given English's wide usage within EU institutions. Each member gets to nominate an official language for EU recognition - because the UK has English, Ireland nominated Gaelic and Malta nominated Maltese. Formally at least Brexit should push one of them to switch.
If they don't switch, it gives the EU the option to adopt English as a neutral common working language (which would only reflect the reality anyway). That would enable countries to continue to work in it without having to notionally give one member a notional advantage.
Certainly that would be a pragmatic solution. More so than Esperanto, anyhow.
On a purely pragmatic level, the Presidents of the organs of the EU all speak fluent English, so it's useful as the informal baseline for chats that don't need to go through the Union's translation machinery.
France vetoing that idea in 3.....2.....
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
He really hasn't. What happens when no can-kicking option achieves a concensus?
Tuesday: meaningful vote fails. Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for 2nd ref fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for exiting with no deal fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for pivoting to Norway+ fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for revoking A50 fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for extending A50 fails Monday: vote on amendment to May's plan B for a new election fails Monday: vote on May's plan B fails. Tuesday: vote of no confidence fails.
We will, however, have made some kind of progress, because we'll be able to see the numbers on all the different possible Plan Bs, and for the first time Parliamentarians will have a clear idea of what sort of ways out of this mess are most likely to be able to command a majority in the House.
Possible plan C or D will stand a chance of finally commanding a majority in the house.
If that happens then it's No-Deal.
Remember No-deal is not a choice, it is a consquence.
The price the EU will exact for supporting Ireland on the backstop is the harmonization of EU corporate tax. That much is clear. Dublin is in for a shock.
I suspect that will be offset by being the only English speaking country left in the EU
Malta is basically English speaking. 88% are fluent. In Holland fully 93% of people claim to speak English. And Sweden can’t be far off.
Ireland’s advantage, in this case, is minimal and dwindling.
The language question is an interesting one, given English's wide usage within EU institutions. Each member gets to nominate an official language for EU recognition - because the UK has English, Ireland nominated Gaelic and Malta nominated Maltese. Formally at least Brexit should push one of them to switch.
Perhaps there would be no need for the EU to use English at all - force the Irish to learn German - there may be a few left over in Dublin from 39-45 who have some of the basic language.
There are many German holiday house owners or immigrants in some rural parts of Ireland. My wife learnt the language from one of them whose goats she sometimes minded. She likes German more than goats.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
You’re not a politician, are you?
You’ve be dragged from your chair within days if you tried to do that.
And rightly so. The practical, let alone political consequences of those ideas would be horrific. Edmund must really hate the poorest in society to want to add 20% to their basic bills overnight.
Almost all of it would totally screw over the little guy. It’s classical “radical centrist” Davos style globalist stuff that myopic numbers driven economists obsess over but would also let the big corporations off the hook.
He’d make Macron look like Watt Tyler.
Only a dictator could introduce such measures.
I mean we've only JUST got round to brutally murdering centrism. Why are people insisting on necromancy on such an unlovely corpse?
Nice to see a tax article - thanks @alanbrooke - and the linked Guardian piece is also well worth a read.
I think the point about concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals using secrecy jurisdictions is well made but the link between that issue and the taxation of large MNCs is perhaps more tenuous. There has been a massive amount of work on international corporate tax transparency and anti-avoidance in the last decade, mostly under the auspices of the OECD but with the U.K. typically one of the early adopters, sometimes implementing stronger measures than required. The complexity of tax compliance for a U.K. subsidiary of a multinational group has increased perhaps threefold in that time because of (for example) the need to consider interest deductibility requirements and anti-hybrid legislation which frequently depends on understanding on how transactions will be taxed in other countries in order to comply with U.K. legislation. Other broadly drafted rules like the diverted profits tax make it a lot harder to be certain of how normal commercial cross-border transactions will be taxed. Transfer pricing requirements are far more onerous and country-by-country reporting has also increased transparency (and work).
I’m not suggesting these rules are a bad thing, but it’s difficult to see that this is an area where politicians have avoided addressing the issues. It would be interesting to hear suggestions of further changes to the corporate tax system which would make a significant difference, short of moving towards a single European/global consolidated corporate tax base, which is generally seen as too much of a surrender of sovereignty to contemplate.
As @edmundintokyo points out, looking at individual income, wealth and consumption taxes is probably the best bet.
Didn't Osborne float the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule [GAAR]? They work well in many countries, but are maybe a bit despotic and arbitrary for British tastes.
Personally I'd go for it. Would put a lot of lawyers out of work for a start, and that has to be a good thing.
No, it would put a lot of lawyers in work.
Osborne not only floated the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule, he implemented it. It's been part of UK tax law since 2013:
Nice to see a tax article - thanks @alanbrooke - and the linked Guardian piece is also well worth a read.
I think the point about concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals using secrecy jurisdictions is well made but the link between that issue and the taxation of large MNCs is perhaps more tenuous. There has been a massive amount of work on international corporate tax transparency and anti-avoidance in the last decade, mostly under the auspices of the OECD but with the U.K. typically one of the early adopters, sometimes implementing stronger measures than required. The complexity of tax compliance for a U.K. subsidiary of a multinational group has increased perhaps threefold in that time because of (for example) the need to consider interest deductibility requirements and anti-hybrid legislation which frequently depends on understanding on how transactions will be taxed in other countries in order to comply with U.K. legislation. Other broadly drafted rules like the diverted profits tax make it a lot harder to be certain of how normal commercial cross-border transactions will be taxed. Transfer pricing requirements are far more onerous and country-by-country reporting has also increased transparency (and work).
I’m not suggesting these rules are a bad thing, but it’s difficult to see that this is an area where politicians have avoided addressing the issues. It would be interesting to hear suggestions of further changes to the corporate tax system which would make a significant
As @edmundintokyo points out, looking at individual income, wealth and consumption taxes is probably the best bet.
Didn't Osborne float the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule [GAAR]? They work well in many countries, but are maybe a bit despotic and arbitrary for British tastes.
Personally I'd go for it. Would put a lot of lawyers out of work for a start, and that has to be a good thing.
It happened. Narrowly defined with a lot of controls:
There are a number of TAARs (targeted anti-avoidance) too, which are kind of mini-GAARs affecting certain categories of abuse. As well as that, loads of new legislation has a catch-all anti-avoidance clause which basically says ‘if anything is done under this particularly bit of tax law which creates a tax advantage, you don’t get the tax advantage.’
Some of it could be described as a bit despotic and arbitrary. Rather than putting lawyers and accountants out of work, it’s created a lot of work for us because the time spent checking that none of these rules are inadvertently triggered by everyday transactions keeps on increasing.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
It wasn't a concern by boffins about igniting the atmosphere. It was a fear that the chain reaction would not stop.
The price the EU will exact for supporting Ireland on the backstop is the harmonization of EU corporate tax. That much is clear. Dublin is in for a shock.
I suspect that will be offset by being the only English speaking country left in the EU
Malta is basically English speaking. 88% are fluent. In Holland fully 93% of people claim to speak English. And Sweden can’t be far off.
Ireland’s advantage, in this case, is minimal and dwindling.
The language question is an interesting one, given English's wide usage within EU institutions. Each member gets to nominate an official language for EU recognition - because the UK has English, Ireland nominated Gaelic and Malta nominated Maltese. Formally at least Brexit should push one of them to switch.
Perhaps there would be no need for the EU to use English at all - force the Irish to learn German - there may be a few left over in Dublin from 39-45 who have some of the basic language.
There are many German holiday house owners or immigrants in some rural parts of Ireland. My wife learnt the language from one of them whose goats she sometimes minded. She likes German more than goats.
The goats are very protective of their language.
But imagine how much more fun European politics would be if it sounded like this:
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
You’re not a politician, are you?
You’ve be dragged from your chair within days if you tried to do that.
And rightly so. The practical, let alone political consequences of those ideas would be horrific. Edmund must really hate the poorest in society to want to add 20% to their basic bills overnight.
Read the third one. (Also add tax credits etc for the same purpose.)
It's true that as a proportion of income poor people spend more on zero-rated stuff than rich people, but they don't spend nearly as much stuff per head in absolute terms, and most people aren't poor, so you collect many times more revenue than the amount the poor are paying and you can give them that and then some with more targetted methods.
How does a steeper income tax curve help those who already pay no income tax? All you are doing is facing essential purchases whilst doing nothing to alleviate those additional costs for the poorest.
There are a lot of ways for the government to help people it they have more money to spend on it, from tax credits, which I specifically mentioned in the post you quoted but you somehow missed, to targetting other spending.
What matters is for the tax-and-spending system as a whole to be progressive. That doesn't mean that every element in it has to be progressive.
Nice to see a tax article - thanks @alanbrooke - and the linked Guardian piece is also well worth a read.
I think the point about concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals using secrecy jurisdictions is well made but the link between that issue and the taxation of large MNCs is perhaps more tenuous. There has been a massive amount of work on international corporate tax transparency and anti-avoidance in the last decade, mostly under the auspices of the OECD but with the U.K. typically one of the early adopters, sometimes implementing stronger measures than required. The complexity of tax compliance for a U.K. subsidiary of a multinational group has increased perhaps threefold in that time because of (for example) the need to consider interest deductibility requirements and anti-hybrid legislation which frequently depends on understanding on how transactions will be taxed in other countries in order to comply with U.K. legislation. Other broadly drafted rules like the diverted profits tax make it a lot harder to be certain of how normal commercial cross-border transactions will be taxed. Transfer pricing requirements are far more onerous and country-by-country reporting has also increased transparency (and work).
I’m not suggesting these rules are a bad thing, but it’s difficult to see that this is an area where politicians have avoided addressing the issues. It would be interesting to hear suggestions of further changes to the corporate tax system which would make a significant difference, short of moving towards a single European/global consolidated corporate tax base, which is generally seen as too much of a surrender of sovereignty to contemplate.
As @edmundintokyo points out, looking at individual income, wealth and consumption taxes is probably the best bet.
Didn't Osborne float the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule [GAAR]? They work well in many countries, but are maybe a bit despotic and arbitrary for British tastes.
Personally I'd go for it. Would put a lot of lawyers out of work for a start, and that has to be a good thing.
No, it would put a lot of lawyers in work.
Osborne not only floated the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule, he implemented it. It's been part of UK tax law since 2013:
Nice to see a tax article - thanks @alanbrooke - and the linked Guardian piece is also well worth a read.
I think the point about concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals using secrecy jurisdictions is well made but the link between that issue and the taxation of large MNCs is perhaps more tenuous. There has been a massive amount of work on international corporate tax transparency and anti-avoidance in the last decade, mostly under the auspices of the OECD but with the U.K. typically one of the early adopters, sometimes implementing stronger measures than required. The complexity of tax compliance for a U.K. subsidiary of a multinational group has increased perhaps threefold in that time because of (for example) the need to consider interest deductibility requirements and anti-hybrid legislation which frequently depends on understanding on how transactions will be taxed in other countries in order to comply with U.K. legislation. Other broadly drafted rules like the diverted profits tax make it a lot harder to be certain of how normal commercial cross-border transactions will be taxed. Transfer pricing requirements are far more onerous and country-by-country reporting has also increased transparency (and work).
I’m not suggesting these rules are a bad thing, but it’s difficult to see that this is an area where politicians have avoided addressing the issues. It would be interesting to hear suggestions of further changes to the corporate tax system which would make a significant difference, short of moving towards a single European/global consolidated corporate tax base, which is generally seen as too much of a surrender of sovereignty to contemplate.
As @edmundintokyo points out, looking at individual income, wealth and consumption taxes is probably the best bet.
Didn't Osborne float the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule [GAAR]? They work well in many countries, but are maybe a bit despotic and arbitrary for British tastes.
Personally I'd go for it. Would put a lot of lawyers out of work for a start, and that has to be a good thing.
No, it would put a lot of lawyers in work.
Osborne not only floated the idea of a General Anti-Avoidance Rule, he implemented it. It's been part of UK tax law since 2013:
You're correct. The scientists feared the politicians rather than the process. "I am become the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer's much quoted quote was also a quote.
It was the controller of the genie he feared, the discovery of the genie was inevitable.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
It's a unknown unknown. We don't know how much hidden wealth and tax avoidance there is, because it's hidden.
The general anti-avoidance rule and IR35 are both based on the pretty reasonable assumption that if it *looks* like the primary purpose of an arrangement or instrument is to avoid tax then it *is*.
A couple of comments: you state that the small countries are diverting the tax revenues of their larger neighbours. There is an assumption that if Ireland did not exist, Apple would base itself in the UK. I'm not sure that's a safe assumption. Maybe the way to look at it is to ask what motivates companies to set themselves up in one place rather than another. Tax will be one factor but there will be others.
Second, our tax laws are far far too complex. The greater the complexity the easier you make avoidance.
Third, these mega companies are effective monopolies. Why are they not being broken up, in the same way that the US used anti-trust legislation in the 19th century to attack their big companies then? Much more should be done on this front.
Some of the small countries went down the tax haven route because they did not have many alternatives. They were relatively poor with sectors such as agriculture and tourism but with a population which wanted first world public services. One way to get that was to sell themselves to big corporations. If that option is closed, what are the alternatives for them? I may have got it wrong but wasn't it the British government which encouraged Caribbean islands to turn themselves into tax havens when the previous trading arrangements were disrupted by Britain's entry into the EU.
What is described here is one of the effects of globalisation: companies picking and choosing where to pay tax, in the way that consumers can go on the internet and pick and choose the cheapest place from which to buy their book etc. Maybe restrictions on one will involve restrictions on the other? Or maybe the way we look at tax has to be done differently. I don't know the answer but there has to be something. Increasingly taxes are being loaded onto individuals who work and do the right thing and who don't instantly scarper from a country to chase an extra pound here or there. Such individuals are not the poorest but they are not so rich that they can feel insulated from the worries of unemployment or catastrophic illness etc. And they are beginning to resent those at the top - whether the very rich or companies - taking the piss.
CES 2019: 'Award-winning' sex toy for women withdrawn from show
"We firmly believe that women, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and LGBTQI folks should be vocally claiming our space in pleasure and tech," she said.
Oppenheimer's famous quotation resonates because it seemed to be the turning point at which physicists collectively realised it was no longer feasible to pretend that worrying about the ethics of research is Somebody Else's Problem.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
But in this analogy is the UK the US doing the nuking or Japan being nuked?
No, you’re wrong. Nuclear Scientists really did seriously discuss this literal possibility. Of igniting the atmosphere. In the end the chances were put at about 1 in 3 million (if this interview is right). So they went ahead. Even then, some were still worried (illogically, no doubt)
O/T I've just had an e-mail that confirms my view that Marion Little was made the fall guy for other peoples' decisions. That doesn't mean she's innocent, simply a small cog.
Ok, a mention of Estonia was bound to trigger me. Estonia shouldn't be on the list. Corporate taxation is zero only on undistributed profits, if any dividend payout the it is taxed as income, at 20%. It is a method to promote the growth of Estonian companies, not a method for foreigners to incorporate and avoid tax. In fact even for Estonian E-residents who set up Estonian companies from overseas, the reporting is actually relatively onerous.
Nor does Estonia stint on defence, it has always complied with the NATO 2% of GDP spend, and sometimes by a big margin, but the pressure from Russia is strong, and Estonia has drones, not an airforce, hence the NATO air policing squadron.
More to the actual point. Estonia does not generally run a deficit, so it has rock solid public finances, the government is run efficiently and has net public assets, rather than a national debt. This explains why Estonia has a AA- credit rating, stable outlook (UK is AA, negative outlook). The country has professionals, not bullshitters, in Parliament. The civil service can deliver ferry charters themselves, without lining the pockets of dubious Tory-connected start-ups. Leadership and management is not just a load of box ticking diversity training horsesh*t. Take back control? I think we are now seeing just how dreadful the quality of UK management in the public and private sectors has got over the past few years. In my lifetime the UK has gone from being the second largest economy in the world to being on the verge of leaving the top ten. That is NOT inevitable decline- it is crappy high schools, the class system, a tolerance of bad behaviour, you name it.
Right now I'm transiting Manchester Airport. Its a toilet. Dingy, dirty, cramped, badly designed, surly staff, everything done as "that'll do". might as well be a metaphor for the whole of the UK and it makes me very very angry. Pull your bloody socks up UK! As for tax avoidance, the sleazy cabal of Tory estate agents will not look kindly on taxing the murderers and other criminals from around the world who have bought flats in London... A Land Value tax should be the start of a comprehensive reform of the Uk tax code- its the longest in the world at 27,000 pages and it mostly designed to hide the fact that the rich pay massively less than the poor. In fact it is London that is the centre of global money laundering so take the beam out of your own eye before you mention the motes elsewhere.
As it’s already been pointed out, the “Tory connected start ups” story was fake.
Excellent article, thanks Alanbrooke. It's an area where the populists, on this issue from Trump to Corbyn, have a legitimate point, and the cosy consensus that globalisation is painless is simply wrong - though the comments from Polruan, who is by no means a right-winger, are interesting too.
It's one reason why I think the EU is a necessary thing in the long run - a single country will always struggle to get a grip on multinationals, a whole developed continent has a much better chance...if they want to. But it does mean squashing the tendency of individual countries to rip off the community by a race to the bottom on corporate taxation. Britain hunts with the hounds and runs with the fox on this - yes, we worry about lost revenue, but the City is Tax Avoidance Central.
Despite not being anywhere to the right of the political spectrum, as you correctly noted, I’m not convinced of the economic value of corporate taxes. Some would argue it’s more effective to tax personal income and wealth, thereby taxing corporate profits that are distributed, and those that aren’t. The total CT take as a proportion of U.K. tax take is out of step with the complexity of the amount of legislation devoted to it.
The biggest challenge is squaring the desire to free up cross border capital flows (removing withholding taxes etc) with finding ways to tax profits earned in a corporate vehicle owned by non-residents. How we deal with that is a pretty good proxy for the whole globalisation debate. As @cyclefree also points out it’s politically important to be seen to tax companies regardless of the economic sense of doing so.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
None of those are taxes on corporations. If anything you are loading even more taxes on individuals rather than on corporations and exacerbating the sense that taxes are paid only by the little people.
I know corporations are people but are they the big people? Or are only big corporations the big people, and little corporations are also the little people?
I think most individuals would see themselves as little people by comparison with corporations i.e. the Amazons and Googles of this world. I expect that my local bookshop would also see themselves as a little person as well, and one threatened by such behemoths. It is easy to tax individuals and property. It is harder to tax corporations. The difficulties of doing the latter should not be an excuse for loading more tax on the former. That will just exacerbate the perception gap @Alanbrooke identifies.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
There was a worry about the LHC creating small micro black holes at one time, but it was never taken seriously.
The article you cite was of that ilk. "I found that it was just incredibly unlikely. And I said so, and I think Teller was very quickly convinced and so was Oppenheimer when he'd returned from seeing Compton."
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
No, you’re wrong. Nuclear Scientists really did seriously discuss this literal possibility. Of igniting the atmosphere. In the end the chances were put at about 1 in 3 million (if this interview is right). So they went ahead. Even then, some were still worried (illogically, no doubt)
It seems it was put to bed quickly having been treated in the spirit of "the only stupid question is the one that goes unasked". Quite rightly.
If every political or scientific worry that was ever raised in discussion had such legs as this one, we would live in far more paranoid times even than the present reality.
No, you’re wrong. Nuclear Scientists really did seriously discuss this literal possibility. Of igniting the atmosphere. In the end the chances were put at about 1 in 3 million (if this interview is right). So they went ahead. Even then, some were still worried (illogically, no doubt)
It's odd. You'd expect physicists to be aware, or at least strongly suspect, that creating a sustained fusion reaction under those conditions would be impossible. But, since at that point no sustained fusion reaction on earth had ever been created I give them a pass.
Unfortunately those same outcomes are likely if we proceed to inflict tremendous damage on the country based on a one-off narrowly won vote that had no proposition, spelled out few of the consequences, and ended up worsening rather than resolving many of the grievances that drove the vote in the first place.
No they really aren't. In the wake of the vote, the vast majority of people in this country accepted that the referendum was legitimate and should be accepted including most of those who voted Remain. They may not have particularly liked it but they were willing to accept the result.
The consequences of MPs deciding to ignore that result because they didn't agree with it, either by asking us to vote again or by simply revoking would be catastrophic. As was pointed out earlier in the thread it would show that MPs regarded themselves as our masters not our servants. The 'we know better than you' meme is putting the final nail in the coffin of Parliamentary Democracy. That is your legacy if Brexit is prevented.
I don't think we are in a position to make such bold assumptions, until we have better idea of the real impact, assuming it ever happens.
Oh, I think we are.
We are heading for a "Who governs the UK - MPs or voters?" election. That will a blood-bath for those MPs who think they do.
What’s going to happen - will voters refuse to vote for MPs? Or only vote for MPs who promise not to govern?
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
Unfortunately those same outcomes are likely if we proceed to inflict tremendous damage on the country based on a one-off narrowly won vote that had no proposition, spelled out few of the consequences, and ended up worsening rather than resolving many of the grievances that drove the vote in the first place.
No they really aren't. In the wake of the vote, the vast majority of people in this country accepted that the referendum was legitimate and should be accepted including most of those who voted Remain. They may not have particularly liked it but they were willing to accept the result.
The consequences of MPs deciding to ignore that result because they didn't agree with it, either by asking us to vote again or by simply revoking would be catastrophic. As was pointed out earlier in the thread it would show that MPs regarded themselves as our masters not our servants. The 'we know better than you' meme is putting the final nail in the coffin of Parliamentary Democracy. That is your legacy if Brexit is prevented.
I don't think we are in a position to make such bold assumptions, until we have better idea of the real impact, assuming it ever happens.
Oh, I think we are.
We are heading for a "Who governs the UK - MPs or voters?" election. That will a blood-bath for those MPs who think they do.
What’s going to happen - will voters refuse to vote for MPs? Or only vote for MPs who promise not to govern?
To be fair, the 2017 election had pretty much the same end result.
Forget no-deal brexit, apparently there’s is a much bigger crisis occurring...
The new vegan sausage roll launched by Greggs is “flying off the shelves”, leaving Britain’s biggest bakery chain unable to keep up with demand after selling hundreds of thousands in the first week.
The £1 rolls have been selling out rapidly, depleting the stocks held at Greggs’ factory in Newcastle, where they are made and frozen before being sent out to shops to bake.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
None of those are taxes on corporations. If anything you are loading even more taxes on individuals rather than on corporations and exacerbating the sense that taxes are paid only by the little people.
I know corporations are people but are they the big people? Or are only big corporations the big people, and little corporations are also the little people?
I think most individuals would see themselves as little people by comparison with corporations i.e. the Amazons and Googles of this world. I expect that my local bookshop would also see themselves as a little person as well, and one threatened by such behemoths. It is easy to tax individuals and property. It is harder to tax corporations. The difficulties of doing the latter should not be an excuse for loading more tax on the former. That will just exacerbate the perception gap @Alanbrooke identifies.
Corporation's don't exist. Well they do. But they are only vehicles for other individuals, the shareholders. This may include some cat fats, but a lot of small investors, and more importantly things like pension funds.
So it's always tempting to say 'Corporations can pay it', but the ultimate owners of every single corporation are individuals, and they're the ones actually paying.
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
Tusk and Junker are both very good German speakers. Junker speaks it like a native and Tusk is very good. He certainly speaks better German than English.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Mr T, There was a worry about the LHC creating small micro black holes at one time, but it was never taken seriously.
Not quite. There were some string theorists who maintained (a few still do) that microscopic black holes are possible. The ridiculous claim that nobody ever believed is that they'd somehow swallow the earth.
In fact they were expected to have a mass of at the absolute most around that of 100 protons, and to evaporate within a trillionth of a second.
That said, no evidence for microscopic black hole creation and evaporation has been found by the LHC, nor do we expect to find them.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
No, you’re wrong. Nuclear Scientists really did seriously discuss this literal possibility. Of igniting the atmosphere. In the end the chances were put at about 1 in 3 million (if this interview is right). So they went ahead. Even then, some were still worried (illogically, no doubt)
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
Tusk and Junker are both very good German speakers. Junker speaks it like a native and Tusk is very good. He certainly speaks better German than English.
Catching up on obits over the hols I just saw the one of Kristian Ward - sounds a hell of a guy but with demons?
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
O/T I've just had an e-mail that confirms my view that Marion Little was made the fall guy for other peoples' decisions. That doesn't mean she's innocent, simply a small cog.
I'm sure she's been promised a decent reward for taking one for the party machine.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
Snails are livestock? Wow.
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
Very interesting header on something that contributes mightily to the challenge of turning 'an economy that works for all' into anything but a soundbite. Also such a refreshing change from Brexit.
And so with great regret and heartfelt apologies ... Ran my model overnight (still on batch processing around here) and on opening the tray and extracting the card this morning was rather taken aback to find only a couple of abrupt (almost rude) sentences.
Yesterday's parliamentary shenanigans left the essential dynamic unchanged.
Brexit is happening unless and until Labour decide otherwise.
Thought: People advocating No Deal (including me when drunk) remind me of the boffins who exploded the 1st atom bomb.
They knew it would be powerful, do some damage, but also end the war: a good thing. But they also thought there was a 10% risk it would ignite the atmosphere, killing the entire world.
Hm.
No. The boffins did not think there was a 10% chance the atom bomb would kill the whole world.
I think they thought it was 'almost' impossible; what percentage chance that comes under I don't know.
No, they didn't. 'Igniting the atmosphere' is not physically / chemically possible (if it was, then volcanoes or meteor strikes would have already done it).
The comment was a metaphor for the atom bomb unleashing a force which might not be *politically* controllable and which might have the power to destroy the world.
Not sure what 'comment' you're referring to?
If you think 'almost impossible' refers to nuclear weapons reaching a point of having the power to destroy the world, well, the boffins were well wide of the fecking mark there, weren't they?
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
I always think that's what people mean when they talk about tax avoidance, they usually mean Taking the Piss.
A gen Z-er graduate putting aside a 500 quid a month into an ISA to save up for a deposit
A billionaire structuring his finances in a complex series of blind trusts based in Bermuda so that he paid $7 in tax last year
Mr T, There was a worry about the LHC creating small micro black holes at one time, but it was never taken seriously.
Not quite. There were some string theorists who maintained (a few still do) that microscopic black holes are possible. The ridiculous claim that nobody ever believed is that they'd somehow swallow the earth.
In fact they were expected to have a mass of at the absolute most around that of 100 protons, and to evaporate within a trillionth of a second.
That said, no evidence for microscopic black hole creation and evaporation has been found by the LHC, nor do we expect to find them.
It did lead to a whole swathe of rather good Sci Fi stories though.
How to deal with parasite taxation? Use taxes that are hard to parasite.
* VAT. On everything. Make it simple, scrap the exemptions and zero-rates * Lots more tax on all the negative externalities, especially fuel * Steeper income tax curve to make up for any regressive effects of the above * Get rid of all the silly tax breaks like CGT relief on your first home * LAND VALUE TAX! HURRAY!
None of those are taxes on corporations. If anything you are loading even more taxes on individuals rather than on corporations and exacerbating the sense that taxes are paid only by the little people.
I know corporations are people but are they the big people? Or are only big corporations the big people, and little corporations are also the little people?
I think most individuals would see themselves as little people by comparison with corporations i.e. the Amazons and Googles of this world. I expect that my local bookshop would also see themselves as a little person as well, and one threatened by such behemoths. It is easy to tax individuals and property. It is harder to tax corporations. The difficulties of doing the latter should not be an excuse for loading more tax on the former. That will just exacerbate the perception gap @Alanbrooke identifies.
Corporation's don't exist. Well they do. But they are only vehicles for other individuals, the shareholders. This may include some cat fats, but a lot of small investors, and more importantly things like pension funds.
So it's always tempting to say 'Corporations can pay it', but the ultimate owners of every single corporation are individuals, and they're the ones actually paying.
Also nation states, supranational bodies, charities, foundations, educational establishments, which all muddies the water.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
Do you think May will take it off the table next week? It'll infuriate the Brexit Buccaneers, but since she knows they have no power to stop her, I think it'd be a good show of faith to Parliament, the EU and the country.
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
Tusk and Junker are both very good German speakers. Junker speaks it like a native and Tusk is very good. He certainly speaks better German than English.
Hardly surprising for Tusk given he comes from what was East Prussia and his grandparents (on one side) were German.
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
Tusk and Junker are both very good German speakers. Junker speaks it like a native and Tusk is very good. He certainly speaks better German than English.
Hardly surprising for Tusk given he comes from what was East Prussia and his grandparents (on one side) were German.
Many of us in the Uk are Anglo Saxon - so German by ancestry.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
Snails are livestock? Wow.
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
I had an lpg powered car a short while ago, the primary purpose for me choosing that particular car was that lpg was substantially cheaper due to the lower level of duty on lpg. Is that tax avoidance ?
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
Tusk and Junker are both very good German speakers. Junker speaks it like a native and Tusk is very good. He certainly speaks better German than English.
Hardly surprising for Tusk given he comes from what was East Prussia and his grandparents (on one side) were German.
Many of us in the Uk are Anglo Saxon - so German by ancestry.
But not close enough to have been able to learn the language from them. Hence the reason we don't speak it.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
I always think that's what people mean when they talk about tax avoidance, they usually mean Taking the Piss.
A gen Z-er graduate putting aside a 500 quid a month into an ISA to save up for a deposit
A billionaire structuring his finances in a complex series of blind trusts based in Bermuda so that he paid $7 in tax last year
One is Taking the Piss, one is not.
There's degrees of taking the piss however.
The way I explain it (as an accountant), is you have white stuff, black stuff, and shades of grey inbetween.
White stuff is no issue at all. Say paying into an ISA Black Stuff is illegal, ie fraud or full avoidance.
Shades of grey go from light grey to very dark grey to nigh on black.
For example, a small business man buying an ipad and putting through the business. He might do 'some' work for the business on it, but he might have his daughter use it too. In that case it's a degree of grey to put it through the business.
Another more large example is most small businesses are structed so a director gets paid as salary a wage close to the personal allowance, ie around £11k a year (it might be less for national insurance reasons). His remaining income is then dividends from the business.
Now, £11k is not a commerical or reasonable salary, but that structure is common practice. Some might have issue with it, and it's a degree of grey, but its how 100,000s of company's operate. How acceptable that it to a person is a matter of opinion.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
Snails are livestock? Wow.
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
There are snail farms though. They are livestock. The question is whether the business premises are genuinely, even if ineptly, being used to farm snails or if it is a tax dodge. I assume it takes time and resources to gather the evidence to prove that.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
I had an lpg powered car a short while ago, the primary purpose for me choosing that particular car was that lpg was substantially cheaper due to the lower level of duty on lpg. Is that tax avoidance ?
It is tax avoidance.
It is also complying with a government incentive to change behaviour.
One man's tax avoidance is another man's government incentive.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
I had an lpg powered car a short while ago, the primary purpose for me choosing that particular car was that lpg was substantially cheaper due to the lower level of duty on lpg. Is that tax avoidance ?
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
Do you think May will take it off the table next week? It'll infuriate the Brexit Buccaneers, but since she knows they have no power to stop her, I think it'd be a good show of faith to Parliament, the EU and the country.
Again we come back to how though?
She cannot take it off the table unless she gets Parliament to endorse an alternative. Because if we do not have an agreement by 29th March, No Deal happens whether we want it or not. Again we are back to gravity. Wishing it wasn't there doesn't stop it existing. Nor does legislating against it.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
Do you think May will take it off the table next week? It'll infuriate the Brexit Buccaneers, but since she knows they have no power to stop her, I think it'd be a good show of faith to Parliament, the EU and the country.
Again we come back to how though?
She cannot take it off the table unless she gets Parliament to endorse an alternative. Because if we do not have an agreement by 29th March, No Deal happens whether we want it or not. Again we are back to gravity. Wishing it wasn't there doesn't stop it existing. Nor does legislating against it.
A post-dated letter to Donald Tusk, to be opened on the 29th March, notifying the Council of our intention to revoke A50 unless alternative arrangements are agreed before that time.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
Snails are livestock? Wow.
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
Britain’s hard-pressed snail farmers couldn’t survive such a cruel arbitrary tax hike.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
I was rather referring to his claim that it is. Generally his predictions have not been well received on here.
No, it isn't off the table, and nor can Theresa May take it off the table. She can say she doesn't want it to happen, more firmly than she has already said that, but unless and until parliament decides which of the existing deal or cancelling Brexit it does want, rather than what it doesn't want, then No Deal remains a clear and present danger.
Corbyn trying to have it all ways and falling through the middle
It does make you wonder if Starmer was leading labour just how far ahead they would be in the polls
Corbyn is a champion waffler and I doubt his call for a GE resounds with the electorate
I think the problem with that is that replacing Corbyn with Starmer is collapsing the probability wave. Currently Labour's Brexit cat is still safely in the box. It still allows them to appeal to both sides even at this late stage. Starmer taking over would open the box and reveal Labour as wholly Remain. Does Labour have the confidence to do that and how would it affect their vote. I am not sure that is clear.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
And for HMRC to effectively enforce it. A lot of 'tax avoidance' is safety in numbers in that you can get away with stuff if 1000s of other people are doing it as well.
I had an lpg powered car a short while ago, the primary purpose for me choosing that particular car was that lpg was substantially cheaper due to the lower level of duty on lpg. Is that tax avoidance ?
It is tax avoidance.
It is also complying with a government incentive to change behaviour.
One man's tax avoidance is another man's government incentive.
It’s really not. Avoidance is obtaining a tax advantage in a way not intended by Parliament in drafting the legislation under which it arises. Buying a technology which the relevant law intended to give an advantage to in order to increase uptake simply isn’t avoidance. Nor is using your ISA allowance. Both are tax planning.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
Snails are livestock? Wow.
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
Britain’s hard-pressed snail farmers couldn’t survive such a cruel arbitrary tax hike.
Let's put it this way, the only language Tusk and Juncker have in common in which they're both fluent is English. Now, every document in the EU is translated into 17 separate languages, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for informal chats.
Tusk and Junker are both very good German speakers. Junker speaks it like a native and Tusk is very good. He certainly speaks better German than English.
Catching up on obits over the hols I just saw the one of Kristian Ward - sounds a hell of a guy but with demons?
Big loss.
Yes. I never knew KW personally as he only came to the Sea Harrier force after I had left it for my F-14 exchange. He had a sterling reputation for flying and fighting the Harrier but was definitely troubled...
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
Do you think May will take it off the table next week? It'll infuriate the Brexit Buccaneers, but since she knows they have no power to stop her, I think it'd be a good show of faith to Parliament, the EU and the country.
Again we come back to how though?
She cannot take it off the table unless she gets Parliament to endorse an alternative. Because if we do not have an agreement by 29th March, No Deal happens whether we want it or not. Again we are back to gravity. Wishing it wasn't there doesn't stop it existing. Nor does legislating against it.
A post-dated letter to Donald Tusk, to be opened on the 29th March, notifying the Council of our intention to revoke A50 unless alternative arrangements are agreed before that time.
It's a kind of backstop, if you will.
Which basically means we Remain no matter what. With that in place Parliament will never pass any form of deal. It is just as dishonest as a second referendum and will have all the dire consequences.
Which basically means we Remain no matter what. With that in place Parliament will never pass any form of deal. It is just as dishonest as a second referendum and will have all the dire consequences.
No, not at all. She has a majority in Parliament. She merely has to get her party and DUP partners to support her deal. Doesn't seem unreasonable since she has a 13-seat majority.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
I was rather referring to his claim that it is. Generally his predictions have not been well received on here.
No, it isn't off the table, and nor can Theresa May take it off the table. She can say she doesn't want it to happen, more firmly than she has already said that, but unless and until parliament decides which of the existing deal or cancelling Brexit it does want, rather than what it doesn't want, then No Deal remains a clear and present danger.
She can take it off the table by bringing forward legislation that says on 29 March 2019 the U.K. will unilaterally revoke its A50 notification unless either a withdrawal agreement has been signed, or the A50 deadline has been extended with the agreement of the EU. If there’s a parliamentary majority in favour of ruling out no deal, that legislation would be passed. If there’s not, it won’t.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
I was rather referring to his claim that it is. Generally his predictions have not been well received on here.
No, it isn't off the table, and nor can Theresa May take it off the table. She can say she doesn't want it to happen, more firmly than she has already said that, but unless and until parliament decides which of the existing deal or cancelling Brexit it does want, rather than what it doesn't want, then No Deal remains a clear and present danger.
She can take it off the table by bringing forward legislation that says on 29 March 2019 the U.K. will unilaterally revoke its A50 notification unless either a withdrawal agreement has been signed, or the A50 deadline has been extended with the agreement of the EU. If there’s a parliamentary majority in favour of ruling out no deal, that legislation would be passed. If there’s not, it won’t.
Which basically means we Remain no matter what. With that in place Parliament will never pass any form of deal. It is just as dishonest as a second referendum and will have all the dire consequences.
No, not at all. She has a majority in Parliament. She merely has to get her party and DUP partners to support her deal. Doesn't seem unreasonable since she has a 13-seat majority.
No there is a clear majority in Parliament for Remain. Always has been. That is the problem.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
I was rather referring to his claim that it is. Generally his predictions have not been well received on here.
No, it isn't off the table, and nor can Theresa May take it off the table. She can say she doesn't want it to happen, more firmly than she has already said that, but unless and until parliament decides which of the existing deal or cancelling Brexit it does want, rather than what it doesn't want, then No Deal remains a clear and present danger.
She can take it off the table by bringing forward legislation that says on 29 March 2019 the U.K. will unilaterally revoke its A50 notification unless either a withdrawal agreement has been signed, or the A50 deadline has been extended with the agreement of the EU. If there’s a parliamentary majority in favour of ruling out no deal, that legislation would be passed. If there’s not, it won’t.
So Parliment just over-rides the referendum...
Yeah, thats not going to have consquences...
It might have the consequence of encouraging Leave supporting MPs to vote in favour of a deal that takes us out of the EU. Would that be so bad?
In other news, Bercow is a self regarding, pumped up little prick who is, happily, being openly cuckolded by his wife. As the whole world knows.
On the other hand his blatant bias yesterday has handily speeded things up. Time is short. We need to choose. Looks to me like we are headed for a second vote. Or Norway plus.
If it is a second vote,I hope the leave side/ leaders come out of it with "We are note taking part" and advise leave voters to do the same.
Great. Bigger remain majority. You get nowt for failing to show up.
This is just going round in circles here. *If* May wants to take threat of No Deal off the table (and we don't know if she does or not), then she will have to put in place some kind of backstop for what happens when we reach March 29th and the WA has not been concluded.
And yet, all political parties seem to think there's still hundreds of billions escaping the tax net, with which they can fund their Grand Projects.
Labour politicians and Guardian writers think that. The reality is rather different.
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
Most of take a view that there is legitimate tax avoidance (eg purchasing an ISA, doing a Deed of Family Arrangement ) and taking the piss (eg putting crates full of snails in an office in order to avoid business rates).
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
I'm intrigued. Why would a crate of snails avoid business rates?
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
You inform the local authority that you are keeping livestock on the premises. It avoids having to pay business rates on an empty property,
Snails are livestock? Wow.
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
Britain’s hard-pressed snail farmers couldn’t survive such a cruel arbitrary tax hike.
And it does sound more like an urban myth...
It really isn't. Read towards the end of Section 6.
He's dead right - IF a no-deal Brexit is off the table.
I was rather referring to his claim that it is. Generally his predictions have not been well received on here.
No, it isn't off the table, and nor can Theresa May take it off the table. She can say she doesn't want it to happen, more firmly than she has already said that, but unless and until parliament decides which of the existing deal or cancelling Brexit it does want, rather than what it doesn't want, then No Deal remains a clear and present danger.
She can take it off the table by bringing forward legislation that says on 29 March 2019 the U.K. will unilaterally revoke its A50 notification unless either a withdrawal agreement has been signed, or the A50 deadline has been extended with the agreement of the EU. If there’s a parliamentary majority in favour of ruling out no deal, that legislation would be passed. If there’s not, it won’t.
So Parliment just over-rides the referendum...
Yeah, thats not going to have consquences...
Unfortunately the referendum didn’t provide any clarity on which of the leave voters were content with the no-deal Brexit that the leave campaign wouldn’t happen so it’s a bit hard to know whether Parliament is over-riding it. A fairer characterisation is that the government has failed to deliver the referendum result and Parliament is mitigating the consequences of that failure.
Comments
First, as the ultimate outcome of this A50 process, as of the date that the A50 process ceases to apply:
Substantively May's deal - 35%
A different deal (i.e. one already assuming a different FFA destination) - 15%
No deal - 15%
Remain - 35%
A multitude of different things can then happen after A50: trade talks take a different direction, change of government, a revokation simply being a reset and the route to a different Brexit path being sought, rejoin, EFTA, but really that is all probably beyond sane pricing.
Then there are different things that can happen on the way to exiting A50 that can be priced independently as specials:
Extension - 40%
A second referendum of some form - 40% (you could break down further)
A change of government - 20%
Etc
(That these add to 100 after my finger in the air numbers is entirely coincidental)
The Speaker is not expected to be neutral between Parliament and the executive - and on this point he has the support of MPs from Clarke to Rees Mogg.
That he has undermined precedent is a far stronger argument against him (and is where Mogg, for example, parts company with him).
Remember No-deal is not a choice, it is a consquence.
On the other hand, taxing rich people for living in the nice places where they want to live in whatever way is hard to avoid it is totally practical and there are lots of ways to do more of it.
PS If you're opposing taxes on land value and the huge unearned capital gains by people living in expensive houses, you don't sound very convincing when you say you're doing it to defend "little people".
We are heading for a "Who governs the UK - MPs or voters?" election. That will a blood-bath for those MPs who think they do.
As for Sainsbury's, yes, why not? But also Amazon and other online giants who are supplying enormous services within the economy. There would, presumably, need to be a very tight definition of who the supplier is.
On a different but related note, I've long thought that there needs to be an investigation into the size of fees and profits at investment banks, which market forces should in theory bring down but which never in practice seems to happen.
Only No Deal is gravity-assisted.....
https://www.rossmartin.co.uk/penalties-a-compliance/compliance/1259-general-anti-abuse-rule-gaar-at-a-glance
Overall the UK government has been pretty aggressive on tax avoidance schemes.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-avoidance-general-anti-abuse-rules
There are a number of TAARs (targeted anti-avoidance) too, which are kind of mini-GAARs affecting certain categories of abuse. As well as that, loads of new legislation has a catch-all anti-avoidance clause which basically says ‘if anything is done under this particularly bit of tax law which creates a tax advantage, you don’t get the tax advantage.’
Some of it could be described as a bit despotic and arbitrary. Rather than putting lawyers and accountants out of work, it’s created a lot of work for us because the time spent checking that none of these rules are inadvertently triggered by everyday transactions keeps on increasing.
But imagine how much more fun European politics would be if it sounded like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3hPa6x8V2o
What matters is for the tax-and-spending system as a whole to be progressive. That doesn't mean that every element in it has to be progressive.
You're correct. The scientists feared the politicians rather than the process. "I am become the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer's much quoted quote was also a quote.
It was the controller of the genie he feared, the discovery of the genie was inevitable.
The general anti-avoidance rule and IR35 are both based on the pretty reasonable assumption that if it *looks* like the primary purpose of an arrangement or instrument is to avoid tax then it *is*.
A couple of comments: you state that the small countries are diverting the tax revenues of their larger neighbours. There is an assumption that if Ireland did not exist, Apple would base itself in the UK. I'm not sure that's a safe assumption. Maybe the way to look at it is to ask what motivates companies to set themselves up in one place rather than another. Tax will be one factor but there will be others.
Second, our tax laws are far far too complex. The greater the complexity the easier you make avoidance.
Third, these mega companies are effective monopolies. Why are they not being broken up, in the same way that the US used anti-trust legislation in the 19th century to attack their big companies then? Much more should be done on this front.
Some of the small countries went down the tax haven route because they did not have many alternatives. They were relatively poor with sectors such as agriculture and tourism but with a population which wanted first world public services. One way to get that was to sell themselves to big corporations. If that option is closed, what are the alternatives for them? I may have got it wrong but wasn't it the British government which encouraged Caribbean islands to turn themselves into tax havens when the previous trading arrangements were disrupted by Britain's entry into the EU.
What is described here is one of the effects of globalisation: companies picking and choosing where to pay tax, in the way that consumers can go on the internet and pick and choose the cheapest place from which to buy their book etc. Maybe restrictions on one will involve restrictions on the other? Or maybe the way we look at tax has to be done differently. I don't know the answer but there has to be something. Increasingly taxes are being loaded onto individuals who work and do the right thing and who don't instantly scarper from a country to chase an extra pound here or there. Such individuals are not the poorest but they are not so rich that they can feel insulated from the worries of unemployment or catastrophic illness etc. And they are beginning to resent those at the top - whether the very rich or companies - taking the piss.
O/T I've just had an e-mail that confirms my view that Marion Little was made the fall guy for other peoples' decisions. That doesn't mean she's innocent, simply a small cog.
The biggest challenge is squaring the desire to free up cross border capital flows (removing withholding taxes etc) with finding ways to tax profits earned in a corporate vehicle owned by non-residents. How we deal with that is a pretty good proxy for the whole globalisation debate. As @cyclefree also points out it’s politically important to be seen to tax companies regardless of the economic sense of doing so.
https://twitter.com/JimMFelton/status/1083316646436048897
(As a fellow "barge owner" this would not surprise me in the slightest...)
Remember the utter nonsense from Richard Murphy, endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, that there was a £120bn 'tax gap'? He included things like capital allowances as 'tax avoidance'!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11797948/Oops-Theres-a-100-billion-hole-in-Jeremy-Corbyns-tax-plans.html
Still, the fantasy helped get Corbyn the leadership, so I suppose job done from his point of view.
There was a worry about the LHC creating small micro black holes at one time, but it was never taken seriously.
The article you cite was of that ilk. "I found that it was just incredibly unlikely. And I said so, and I think Teller was very quickly convinced and so was Oppenheimer when he'd returned from seeing Compton."
If every political or scientific worry that was ever raised in discussion had such legs as this one, we would live in far more paranoid times even than the present reality.
The difficulty is to draft a legal distinction between the two.
The new vegan sausage roll launched by Greggs is “flying off the shelves”, leaving Britain’s biggest bakery chain unable to keep up with demand after selling hundreds of thousands in the first week.
The £1 rolls have been selling out rapidly, depleting the stocks held at Greggs’ factory in Newcastle, where they are made and frozen before being sent out to shops to bake.
So it's always tempting to say 'Corporations can pay it', but the ultimate owners of every single corporation are individuals, and they're the ones actually paying.
I'm sensing a business opportunity here: I have lots of snails in my garden which I want to get rid of .....
In fact they were expected to have a mass of at the absolute most around that of 100 protons, and to evaporate within a trillionth of a second.
That said, no evidence for microscopic black hole creation and evaporation has been found by the LHC, nor do we expect to find them.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/01/10/no-deal-brexit-table-sterling-assets-screaming-buy/
Big loss.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/jan/10/brexit-latest-news-corbyn-speech-may-press-conference-reaches-out-to-labour-by-welcoming-workers-rights-amendment-politics-live
So if a business wants to save rates all they have to do is get in touch with me and I can produce a load of snails for them in a box and take a cut of the money they save. Hmmmm. Where's the catch I wonder?
Surely the answer is to define livestock so that it means what you and I would ordinarily think of as livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chicken etc?
And so with great regret and heartfelt apologies ... Ran my model overnight (still on batch processing around here) and on opening the tray and extracting the card this morning was rather taken aback to find only a couple of abrupt (almost rude) sentences.
Yesterday's parliamentary shenanigans left the essential dynamic unchanged.
Brexit is happening unless and until Labour decide otherwise.
If you think 'almost impossible' refers to nuclear weapons reaching a point of having the power to destroy the world, well, the boffins were well wide of the fecking mark there, weren't they?
A gen Z-er graduate putting aside a 500 quid a month into an ISA to save up for a deposit
A billionaire structuring his finances in a complex series of blind trusts based in Bermuda so that he paid $7 in tax last year
One is Taking the Piss, one is not.
Q. Why do politicians get three questions asked at the same time
A. It makes it less obvious that they are not answering the questions asked.
Many of us in the Uk are Anglo Saxon - so German by ancestry.
As you have a Physics background, and while you mention string theory and the LHC, where's supersymmetry got to? Not too much maths, please?
The way I explain it (as an accountant), is you have white stuff, black stuff, and shades of grey inbetween.
White stuff is no issue at all. Say paying into an ISA
Black Stuff is illegal, ie fraud or full avoidance.
Shades of grey go from light grey to very dark grey to nigh on black.
For example, a small business man buying an ipad and putting through the business. He might do 'some' work for the business on it, but he might have his daughter use it too. In that case it's a degree of grey to put it through the business.
Another more large example is most small businesses are structed so a director gets paid as salary a wage close to the personal allowance, ie around £11k a year (it might be less for national insurance reasons). His remaining income is then dividends from the business.
Now, £11k is not a commerical or reasonable salary, but that structure is common practice. Some might have issue with it, and it's a degree of grey, but its how 100,000s of company's operate. How acceptable that it to a person is a matter of opinion.
It is also complying with a government incentive to change behaviour.
One man's tax avoidance is another man's government incentive.
She cannot take it off the table unless she gets Parliament to endorse an alternative. Because if we do not have an agreement by 29th March, No Deal happens whether we want it or not. Again we are back to gravity. Wishing it wasn't there doesn't stop it existing. Nor does legislating against it.
It does make you wonder if Starmer was leading labour just how far ahead they would be in the polls
Corbyn is a champion waffler and I doubt his call for a GE resounds with the electorate
Which is what all the opinion polls are saying currently, so there's a good chance it'll happen.
It's a kind of backstop, if you will.
I have been crystal clear that nothing has changed
I am getting on with the job of delivering Brexit
My deal is the only deal on the table
Yeah, thats not going to have consquences...
https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/business-rates-avoidance--7b4.pdf