Sell out UK

[Zech]

This is just utterly depressing. I generally avoid the news as it gets me down and there's nothing I can do anyway, but friends passed this on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... is+free%29

It's a change in corporation tax law, applying only to large and medium sized companies, that exempts them from paying any tax on money earnt in foreign countries.
"The new legislation will create a powerful incentive to shift business out of this country and into nations with lower corporate tax rates."

There are plenty of other quotable comments about the nature of our government, but I'll let you read the article for yourself.

Now what was that about overthrowing capitalism?

[greenorelse]

This should surprise no-one.

You might not like Labour but that's not a good enough reason to put the Tories in power.

[Susie]

I've just read this and the Polly Toynbee column in today's Guardian and I'm just despairing.

[oldjerry]

I've just read this and the Polly Toynbee column in today's Guardian and I'm just despairing.

......Agreed,...I'm bloody emigrating......

[dave45]

If true... seems a little short of specifics !

[123sologne]

......Agreed,...I'm bloody emigrating......

I so want to do that too, NOW, but nothing is ready on the other side!
I feel sick

[oldjerry]

Me too....but nothings ready THIS side...it's so much grief,if it wasn't so crap in the uk who'd bother moving .Yep,I've got the feeling crap,dark morning,going mad Febuary Blues...........

[contadina]

Cutting corporation tax has been a key component of the UK and Ireland's inward investment strategy in the past, but it relies on really high direct investment levels to work. Foreign direct investment into the UK halved in 2009 and early indications suggest that it barely picked up in 2010.

Without high inward investment, already stretched services and infrastructure begin to buckle, making the UK become less attractive.

All cutting corporate tax levels will do is begin yet another race around the globe to offer the most competitive tax environment, but economic growth should not be measured in the profit large companies make and shunt abroad.

[greenorelse]

The dependency on direct foreign investment upon which the Irish economy relies is worrying, as is the frantic political gabbling and the media frenzy that inevitably follows - again inevitable - corporate pull-outs, when a lower rate and bigger subsidies are offered elsewhere.

It also takes away much of the drive and creativity that is necessary to create a vibrant society. It is like a drug.

[Zech]

If true... seems a little short of specifics !

The specifics are here:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/corpora ... cument.pdf
See pages 87 and 88:
"Under the present rules, UK companies are subject to CT on the profits of their foreign branches, with credit given for foreign tax paid on the same profits, in order to relieve double taxation. In cases where the foreign tax paid is less than the UK tax, then the company must pay a “top up” of UK tax, while under an exemption regime there would be no such tax."
"The Government proposes an opt-in exemption regime for foreign branch taxation... any company may elect for all its branches to be permanently exempt from UK CT."

I see there's a consultation on this - if we're quick, the government is inviting us to tell them what we think!
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/consult_t ... anches.htm (deadline for responses is 11th Feb)

[jim]

Dear Zech,

Just read your link. If it wasn't true it would sound like the labyrinthine, corporate world of Wiliam Gibson cyberpunk plots. Just goes to show we don't need conspiracy theories, reality is scary enough. When are enough people going to realize it?

Love and Peace
Jim

[gregorach]

I see there's a consultation on this - if we're quick, the government is inviting us to tell them what we think!

Of course they are. They will take your views, consider them carefully, file them in a disused lavatory in the basement with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard", and then proceed to do exactly what they were going to do anyway. Unless, of course, you happen to be the head of the CBI or the billionaire CEO of one of the firms likely to benefit from this, in which case they will be more than happy to take your suggestions on board.

[Susie]

This one about bankers as well, just to make you all more depressed.

I don't know if I'd feel better if I thought the kind of bankers who were getting these mega-bonuses were actually having a good time but I always feel like they aren't. I always imagine them sitting there with an ulcer and probably impotent while their self-hating trophy wife looks at them beadily, in a great big uncomfortable bad-taste house. There was a feature in one of the papers a while ago about someone who decorated the houses of the super-rich and he'd just installed a moving dolphin mural in front of someone's treadmill in the exercise room and I thought, that's hardly the peak of culture and civilization, is it? Marching on a treadmill looking at a fake dolphin? I think money's overrated if you start to think things like that are a good idea.

Still, they're probably happier than library users/ public sector employees/ anyone wanting to go to the toilet in Manchester/ etc etc.

[jim]

Dear Susie,

Did you read this bit in your link?

"Stanley Fink, a hedge fund manager who was appointed the Tory treasurer last year in succession to Spencer, gave £1.9m......"

Seems like the man has the right name,

Love and Peace
Jim

[Susie]