All this talk of tax competition, tax planning, tax avoidance, and so on can make one terribly pessimistic. After reading Tim Harford and Michael Devereux both argue that we may as will give up on corporation tax, I got to wondering how much it actually raises. Luckily I had some data to hand, from the… Continue reading Corporation tax raises $1.5 trillion a year
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How much tax “ought” Starbucks to have paid?
On Friday evening Ben Saunders posted a really interesting reply to my post arguing the case for name and shame campaigns. If you haven’t already, you should go read it. It’s interesting for two reasons. First, because Ben’s been thinking hard about Starbucks’ tax structure and the practical implementation of its dramatic commitment last week.… Continue reading How much tax “ought” Starbucks to have paid?
Starbucks’ move is a game changer
Well, someone’s got to say it. I presumed there’d be something weasily in there somewhere, but reading the statement in full, it seems pretty watertight.
Why I don’t agree with UK Uncut’s critics
In this post, I’m going to let you into a little secret about tax avoidance campaigners. But I’ll come back to that in a bit. In a week bookended by the Public Accounts Committee’s criticism of Starbucks, Amazon and Google, and UK Uncut’s planned action in Starbucks stores, the usual criticisms of ‘name and shame’… Continue reading Why I don’t agree with UK Uncut’s critics
Untitled
Originally posted on Martin Hearson:
The most lively debate in the first two days of the UN tax committee meeting ended with the decision to start work on a new article for the UN’s model tax treaty that would allow developing countries to levy a tax on payments made to overseas providers of ‘technical services’.…
Starbucks et al: making sense of today’s news
Following the debate over today’s Public Accounts Committee report is difficult when everything is so blurred by simplification: it’s like Chinese whispers. But here are some thoughts based on what I think we know.
Martin Hearson 