Petition – scrap “Help to buy”
We, the undersigned request the government stops creating schemes such as ‘firstbuy’ and ‘help to buy’ which are harmful to the UK economic.
Why the concern about Google?
Why the concern about Google? Criticism of Google’s tax avoidance practices continues to rumble on in the newspapers. It is, the critics argue, a case of Google not being “good citizens”. This is to miss the point completely. If Google’s (or anyone else’s) actions are immoral but legal, then surely it is the law that needs to be changed? Law and morality need to be...
HMRC gobbledygook
I have just tried to fill in my tax return, which includes a section for foreign income. I was advised to study these 86 pages of accountancy jargon ironically referred to as “explanatory”.
IPPR makes useless contribution to the tax debate
IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research, describing itself as “the UK’s leading progressive thinktank”, has just released an essay by a Chris Nicholas, “Fairer taxes for a better economy” This sounded promising. There is a section on taxing wealth. Nicholas writes
“Closing the circle both fiscally and progressively, a general wealth tax would be introduced....
Internet trade tax avoidance shock horror protest
The tax avoidance industry has been spawning a tax avoidance protest industry, with the Guardian in the lead. It focusses on the non-crimes committed by firms such as Google, Amazon and Apple, who have de-localised their activities so that it is impossible to establish exactly where they are trading. The Guardian has run a whole series of features this week about the online trading company Amazon.
Amazon...
Bangladesh factory scandal
The Bangladesh factory scandal has been followed by a round of breast-beating, as if firms that sell cheap clothing, or their customers, were to blame and could do something about the situation, even if it was just to apply political pressure.
The wages of labour are in all circumstances the least that people will accept. If there are no other opportunities for earning a livelihood, then people...
What happened to the LVT Bill
CAROLINE LUCAS WRITES“My Bill wasn’t discussed on Friday 26th April as it wasn’t a sitting day in the end. It was down on the Parliamentary papers for that date as a way of keeping the Bill ‘live’ for as long as possible. However, I knew that it wouldn’t have any chance of actually being debated. The Bill has now fallen as the Parliamentary Session has formally...
Online retailing tax crackdown
The US Senate is apparently considering legislation to require online retailers to pay state sales taxes. It would be misguided. Politicians and bureaucrats should accept contemporary realities. Transaction taxes have been made obsolete by technology. Corporation taxes have been made obsolete by globalisation, again partly through technology. Taxes on people have been made obsolete because they...
Economics professors discredited
It is nice to see professional economists revealed as charlatans, as has just happened in the Reinhart and Rogoff affair. The conclusion being drawn is that economics is not a science. We disagree. Economics is a science but, but one in a state of great confusion, as a Cambridge University professor, the late Wynne Godley, once said at the start of an article written about thirty years ago. What...
Welfare cuts and local economies
One of the effects of the welfare cuts that start today has so far received little attention – their effect on local economies in depressed areas. By removing purchasing power from local economies, the cuts will make matters worse. Workers – especially in retailing – are going to lose their jobs as welfare recipients cut back. The cuts are meant to encourage work instead of living...