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.
Physiocrats
On Thursday, 20 June, Melvin Bragg’s radio programme In Our Time was about the Physiocrats. It will be available indefinitely on the Internet.
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”.
Göteborg to have congestion charge referendum
Sweden’s second largest city, Göteborg, introduced a congestion charge at the beginning of the year. This is a “cordon” scheme, with charges being incurred when vehicles pass one of the toll points around the city, The dual aims are to reduce congestion and raise revenue for the West Sweden package, a collection of road and rail infrastructure projects. The most expensive item...
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...