Quote ="Andy Gilder"Just to inform and educate Dally a little...
What the likes of Vodafone and others do is take a very, Uvery extreme interpretation of legislation and case law in order to treat profits earned in the UK from UK customers as being taxable elsewhere. The elsewhere often being somewhere like Luxembourg with lower CT rates.
They are effectively shifting money that should be taxed in theUK overseas, and challenging HMRC to pursue them through the courts for it in the knowledge that they have the cash and lawyers to string it out for years, while HMRC don't.
As a result, HMRC will settle for something as being better than nothing for the public purse. These companies are wilfully evading UK tax, not avoiding it. If successive rounds of public sector cuts hadn't pulled the teeth from HMRC they may not have found it so easy.'"
IIRC HMRC's legal budget is all but blown in the first quarter of the year, all they have left is the wherewithall to pursue the plumbers etc...
Another point that Gauke spectacularly fails to grasp is that once a wealthy individual or corporate entity offshore their money to avoid tax, that money is then lost totally to the UK economy - all of it, as if it never, ever existed. Whereas, as has been mentioned, the plumber, sparky and cleaner will tend to spend their ill-gotten gains within the local economy, simply because they have no means of offshoring it.
