Speaking truth to power at the OECD and then ignoring power by playing on my laptop

I am well aware that many people find that my blogging on country-by-country reporting a little repetitive. That’s mainly because I’m determined to make sure people think that it was my idea and not something I pinched off the reporting for extractive industries.

The other day, I can’t remember which, I am so tirelessly expertising on taxation, I was doing that at the OECD on behalf of civil society.

Yes, that is right, I was the only person in the room  from civil society. Business is no part of civil society, though civil society is entirely dependent on business unfortunately, but it must listen to civil society for which I always speak.

So it was very rude of the people in the room to express their own opinions of how we might improve the current system rather than listening to civil society’s demands (ie my demands) of why we should ditch the current system and use civil society’s proposal (ie my proposal).

So after listening for an hour civil society opened its mouth (ie I opened my mouth) and pointed out that 99.9% of the world’s population would not think this issue a priority in world taxation.

Civil society thought (ie I thought) that we should be just taking about how great country by country reporting is.

Somebody then pointed out to me that if one in a thousand people thought it was an issue, that was probably more than the proportion of the world who actually understand how world taxation works and it might be worth listening to them instead.

Also, an obvious neoliberal rudely commented to civil society (ie me, I think you get the idea now) that 99.9% of people don’t care how the tax system works, just that it does, and that’s what they were working on.

Civil society was not impressed with this response. So civil society decided to ignore the rest of the meeting and play on the internet instead.

I told you so – we need tax unprofessionals on the GAAR panel

As everybody in the country will know, I was on the GAAR interim panel which introduced the interim guidance which ended tax avoidance once and for all. Except it wasn’t once (I personally had ended it once prior to then) or for all (especially if you have never been resident or domiciled in the UK).

No, tax avoidance survived and rose from the grave whence I put it. At least twice.

I have always argued that people who know about tax should not be allowed on the GAAR panel for fear of using their knowledge of what tax legislation means to decide what it should mean. My preference is to have several trade union representatives who are directly opposed to any cuts whatsoever, and hence interested in maximising tax revenues, have a legally binding vote that would allow HMRC to impose whatever liability they feel like.

So it is with no great schadenfreude that I point out that tonight I point out that a member of the GAAR panel, David Heaton, (“HMRC’s David Heaton“, as the BBC call him) suggested ways for people to minimise their tax bills.

Much to the shock of all who attended, Mr Heaton gave useful tips on how individuals could mitigate their tax liabilities. I am appalled to think that he was giving actual tax planning advice at a tax planning conference, going as far as suggesting that people who might be eligible for maternity pay should actually claim it! The horror!

Worse still, he tried to display a bit of humour by referring to the Chancellor’s “grubby mitts”. Oh, the neoliberal horror!

People who work for the government should be austere (in manner and countenance; not monetarily, obviously) and humourless wherever practicable. And I think that the GAAR panel should work for the government who doesn’t actually pay them.

So this event proves the need for my GRAPIST. A tax adviser has referred to the hands of the Chancellor as “grubby” and therefore all tax professionals are immoral. Therefore, knowledge of tax legislation is corrupting. And therefore we need a GAAR panel made up of people who haven’t the first idea about tax or the law.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Catching up on yesterday. (You should just buy Cashing In, my new book available off Amazon)

As many of you will know, I always carefully consider my responses to news stories. I never ever simply say the first thing in my head and publish it on the internet without making the proper professional and ethical considerations for somebody who considers himself to be a tax expert.

But, then, I normally do this exceptionally quickly.

But I didn’t actually bother watching the PAC session or paying any attention to the UK Uncut court failure. I had predicted these events and they occurred exactly as I thought they would.

Instead, I just reread Cashing In by Murphy Richards. You can too by popping along to Amazon or the Google PlayStore where it is exclusively available.

Besides, Margaret Hodge obviously knows what she is talking about as she has properly checked her own family’s business’s accounts rather than simply asking them for some sort of assurance that they pay “the right amount of tax”. That would be somewhat hypocritical given the probing she is giving Google and Amazon.

Anyway, Margaret Hodge won the day by comparing Matt Brittin to Satan by saying “I think you do evil”. Google are obviously the spawn of the devil by trading with the UK and not paying tax here.

The fact is, they don’t need to employ any people in the UK, so the fact they do should make us try to apply corporation tax until they either sack their UK staff or pay the fair amount of tax.

Also occurring yesterday, pro-profligacy group Uncut the UK won their moral argument in their High Court case by wasting HMRC’s resources and time in an action that was only ever going to impair HMRC’s ability to do an already difficult and unpopular job. So thank you for that. Well done.

The downside of the decision is now that this provides a precedent that means I can’t go around suing government bodies and organs of The State over decisions that don’t affect me directly when I don’t think they’re doing their job properly or I think they have made a bad decision.

Finally, back at the PAC, Lin Homer behaved like the sort of white middle-aged middle-class woman we are used to seeing in positions of authority. How difficult would it be to find a white middle-aged middle-class man who could do her job in order to bring some diversity to HMRC?

She said:

We see – but understand more fully – some of the information that might seem to the general public to be surprising.

The arrogant bitch implied that HMRC are able to access information from Google and Amazon that I can’t get from reading the Guardian or Private Eye!

The Guardian and Private Eye, of course, that do not cherry pick the information they publish. They have, I imagine, fully disclosed all the information that they have uncovered in the past four months that didn’t support their arguments.

No, all the information I need can be found from those two sources. Which is why I know that Stemcor must be letting HMRC set their transfer pricing policy (the only truly moral course of action), Google is evil and Uncut the UK have been unfairly dismissed as a bunch of vitriolic whining morons.

That is my carefully considered and objective, as ever, opinion.

I say opinion, I mean “The Truth”.

HM Treasury have also been assimilated by the Borg 4

A friend of mine has suggested that I should have called the Big 4 the “Borg 4” in my earlier post. Hence the title of this post. It has something to do with Star Trek apparently.

Anyway, HM Treasury has said that dear Margaret Hodge’s report on the malign influence of the large accountancy firms bears no resemblance to reality.

This is a clear sign that the Treasury have already been seduced by the dark side of the force.

Belinda Dodwell can’t face both ways at once, the bitch

The Mail published some interesting, but limited data on Sunday suggesting the lack of information on which companies registered on the FTSE 100 do and do not disclose the tax they pay in the UK, and how much of the tax those who do make declaration do pay here.

It’s about £1 in every £7, it transpires. And we must acknowledge that the headquarters of these businesses are responsible for a significant chunk of the profits. But that’s not what the tax position shows is it?

But we must not acknowledge that when the group is headquartered overseas, obviously.

The Fall of Murphy Richards – a post by Dr John Watson

It is with a heavy heart that I take to my laptop to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr Murphy Richards was distinguished.

It was my intention to say nothing of the following events which have created a void in my life which the past three days have done little to fill.

My hand has been forced, however, due to the great outpouring of grief that has inundated this blog and Murphy’s email account following the news of his death, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose is to be served by its suppression.

Also, as Murphy fell to his death I heard him shout out “mention my book!” I can only deduce that he fully intended me to tell of his heroic death. Knowing the man, I suspect that, despite his modesty, it is what he would have wanted.

PAC man

Yesterday, I secreted myself in the Boothroyd Room to listen to the Public Accounts Committee grilling of Starbucks, Amazon and Google. It was quite an uncomfortable few hours but I felt it was worth it.

After Margerat Hodger announced the charges, Starbucks were called up first and it was no surprise that they argued that royalties were normal business practice. They’re not.

Starbucks should be paying their subsidiaries and franchisees 6% of their turnover for the use of their brand if anything. Just because it’s “commercial” doesn’t mean it’s moral.

The fact that the law says you adjust for an arms length price is misleading. I have quite short arms, which is why I was rejected from being a postman. Other people have long arms. Does the legislation take this into account? I think not.

So, Starbucks are clearly flouting the law by looking at just the wording of the legislation and not trying to guess what each and every single MP was thinking about at the time they enacted every single piece of legislation.

There was a time in this country when a woman (or man) could be taken on her word with reference to her thoughts, motives and desires. Not any more. Everybody is so bloody literal and pedantic nowadays!

You now have to say what you mean apparently! Sorry!

For you idiots, I clearly didn’t mean that. So words clearly aren’t the same thing as their meaning. So words don’t mean anything. That’s why you’re supposed to ignore them!

For example, taking the lying bastard from Amazon.

Amazon are clearly based in the UK. Margaret Hodge was correct to point out that her computer is in the UK and therefore they should be subject to UK corporation tax based entirely on their sales. It says clearly “.co.uk” on their website which is a further indication of their UK-ness (a techincal term).

This principle was established in the case of IRS v Tesco UK Ltd (1935) where the US authorities successfully taxed Tesco on the basis that their online presence is at Tesco.com.

Margaret Hodge is clearly thinking through the principles of her argument and reaching sensible, natural conclusions. We should applaud her for the strain that it has clearly put on her.

But that Frenchman (I think) sat there and lied, saying that he didn’t know everything about Amazon, when clearly he did.

Next up, Dodge laid into Google’s Matt Brittin, who suggested that Google were allowed to consider the rate of corporation tax in deciding where to head-quarter Google in Europe.

Well, in the UK we’re all in this together, which means we expect the Irish to pay their fair share of taxes in the UK too. That’s right, we want 30% of your turnover. Because as far as I can tell, you don’t do anything over there except drink Guinness and Jamesons all day long.

It’s just immoral to think that they would come to Europe and decline to be taxed in the UK. We invented the internet! Didn’t you see the Paralympics opening ceremony? That’s right Stephen Hawking invented the internet and he’s British. So the IRS should sod off and give us all that tax back from Waitrose.com too!

Also, we invented football. Why do Barcelona pay minimal tax in the UK? Bloody Portuguese tax avoiding immoralists.

But the most important thing about this was that Margaret Hodge made the point that of course none of this was illegal, it was immoral.

When we invented the law (don’t get me started on that), we decided that the law should represent the boundaries of morality, but only with regards to The State. Therefore, initially it was considered moral to murder a banker, but not an officer of the Treasury.

This changed when it was pointed out that the banker was a taxpayer and his murder damaged revenues. I imagine we would all like to return to those fundamental principles of justice now.

So you can see it is moral to murder a banker, but not legal, despite the fact that we now have inheritance tax to compensate The State for the untimely death of a taxpayer. In fact, many wealthy people would be more valuable to The State if they were to no longer be alive. Staying alive is a selfish act of tax avoidance in most instances.

But I have digressed.

The point here is that it is simply not ‘fair play’ for people to read the law as it is written and expect that it is some sort of reflection of what we expect to be paid in this country.

Basically, if you want to read the law like that, then expect to be dragged before the court of public opinion on a regular basis and given a harsh sentence of being called ‘immoral’ whilst you pretend that it’s like somebody, I don’t know who, sat down and thought up a bunch of rules that ought to cover this very situation.

They didn’t, alright, and you should bloody well respect that you neoliberal sophists.