June 7th, 2011
Bill Gates likes to be thought of as a great philanthropist. He’s referred to as such, so I guess he’s happy about it. And
in some senses he is.
But remember he gets tax relief as a result.
Remember something else too: the value of Microsoft has undoubtedly
been inflated by its tax planning. Low taxes equals higher value is a golden rule of the stock market: it’s the motive for tax avoidance.
So ask a question: how much of Gates’ philanthropy has been paid for by the US Exchequer? Quite a lot, I suspect. It’s still philanthropy, but not quite as it first...
May 31st, 2011
The Sunday Times did an
expose of Google’s tax affairs Sunday.
I’ll declare an interest: they asked me to help the investigation, and I did.
The findings? Google has avoided £3 billion of tax worldwide over the last five years. It’s tax rate outside the USA is just 3%.
In 2009, if Google had declared profits in proportion to sales in the UK in the ratio that the worldwide accounts showed (about 35% profit pre tax) then the expected UK tax bill would have been about £190 million.
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May 27th, 2011
A couple of weeks ago I presented evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. My evidence will be published shortly. This week Dave Hartnett also gave evidence to that committee, and at least in part on the same subject: employee benefit trusts. As
Accountancy Age reports:
told the Lords Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub-Committee: “Some of the offshore arrangements have been pretty opaque to us for some time.”
Hartnett said: “It is not always possible to use the exchange of information provisions under treaties and other things to expose those.”
The disclosure regime had...
May 26th, 2011
Hillary Clinton made an extraordinary speech to the OECD on aid today. It went far beyond anything I might have expected.
The whole thing is here. The important highlights are as follows, in my opinion:
There are many urgent issues we could discuss today, but I want to focus on two. First, partnering with developing countries on reforms in three interconnected areas – taxes, transparency, and corruption – because focusing on these three will give us the tools needed to enable more countries to fund more of their own development. And second, doing more to support women as...
