Corporation tax is meant to be 30% but in reality it is little more than 22%. That's the conclusion of a year long
survey carried out by chartered accountant Richard Murphy, a former KPMG tax specialist, estimates that tax dodging by multinationals ". . .are equivalent to almost one and a half times the amount of foreign aid given to poor countries each year.", a grand for every worker in Britain, or about 82 billion quid.
The survey has to be taken seriously but the government won't do anything to rectify the situation. In fact, it's doing exactly the opposite and is in the process of caving into big business pressure on this very issue. It turns out that there was some small print in a government draft proposal that - oo no! - would have meant that corporations would pay more in tax - i.e. might actually pay what the law says that they should.
Big business
lobbyists "have hinted that they could move their headquarters off shore unless they reach an agreement over the next few months. " That is, unless the government backs off.
The dastardly proposals have provoked, "[m]oves in recent weeks by pharmaceutical firm Shire and publisher United Business Media to relocate their head offices to the lower tax regime in Ireland [which] have spooked ministers and forced a rethink of reforms designed to simplify taxes on profits earned abroad."
It's interesting to note that ministers have been "spooked" into a retreat over this issue and not spooked by the kicking they got last week in the local elections. But what glares out about this story is that (surely uncoincidentally) the two stories appears the same day. The reader is offered a stark choice - there is no third way. Either you support those people who swan about in offices like the one pictured above or you care more about the kid in the picture. The world is divided into two camps. All the information is there and reay to hand - it's stares you in the face.
Even the Guardian can't really ignore it, though it does spend longer on the latter story which it headlines at the expense of the tax dodger story, and adds lamely, "At the heart of the row is a campaign by multinational businesses to pay less tax. They argue that Britain's major competitors are more business-friendly and willing to cut taxes to maintain a healthy and thriving community of major corporations.", as if we didn't get the point.
Ah yes "healthy and thriving".
It's a peculiar choice of biological adjectives - maybe downright disgusting and even perhaps deliberately provocative - meant to generate legitimacy for the business' campaign. Their profits are like food that keeps the body politics healthy and glowing, or like water and other natural good things, of course. Yet the counter-evidence destroys the credibility of the CEO's moves. The government's craven capitulation before this (wildly undemocratic) lobbying (face it, it's called corruption) erodes what's left of their legitimacy even further. Naturally, this goes not just for the Blair Party, but for the other gang as well. The whole British state stands before us dripped in gore, cowering before its limosined, Gucci suited champagne quaffed masters. Brown, Straw, Cameron etc. are the vomit dripping down the unaccaceptable face of capitalism.
How long can the whole life draining rigidly boring system carry on before it is blasted away?
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