The UK, mother of parliaments, defender of freedom and justice, and now it can claim to be a world leader, top dog, away out in front of any other country in the world. What is is that the UK can claim to be the big boss in, the number one, the master in the field? Well in is a field in which no other country comes near to the UK, it is of course in facilitating tax dodging.
From The Independent:But an index published today by the Tax Justice Network found that the UK has “single-handedly” done the most to break down the global corporate tax system which loses an estimated $500bn (£395bn) to avoidance.
The amount dodged globally each year is more than three times the NHS budget or roughly equivalent to the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Belgium. Tax haven territories linked to Britain are responsible for around a third of the world’s corporate tax avoidance risk – more than four times the next greatest contributor, the Netherlands.
While you and I get our tax whipped of before we get our hands on our cash, big business is granted the privilege of avoiding paying their taxes. We can't really expect our prancing political ballerinas to do anything about that matter, after all some of them use that facility, or have friends that do so. They will waffle and babble on about this disgraceful situation, set up committees to look at it, speak about it on tele. Then in the next year or two another "revelation" about this "flaw" in the system will hit the headlines and then the pontificating will start all over again.
Mean while we will be told that there is no money tree and the NHS will have to be more efficient, the education system will need to get smarter in the way it does things, social services will be told to be more joined up with other services. Libraries will close, other services will handed to the private sector, the same sector that is stuffing its profits in some tax haven to avoid paying anything into the public purse.
WE are being shafted on a daily basis, yet most people still seem to think the answer is in doing what they have done for countless years with no effect, appealing to those who legislate so that their friends can continue to shaft the public. When will we ever learn---
