June 8th, 2011
LONDON – The government is proposing to scrap more than two dozen criminal penalties underlying anti-money laundering procedures to encourage business to adopt a risk-based approach.
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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 30th, 2011
LONDON – Christian Aid is urging the Chancellor to consider how poor countries could be harmed by a deal allowing UK citizens with secret Swiss bank accounts to continue hiding their identities from the British taxman.
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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...
