To think that the Government should not be allowing large corporations to avoid paying tax on profits made in "tax havens" yet allowing them to claim against UK taxes to fund foreign branches?

[Inertia]

And that any committee made up of corporate executives, if given the task of developing policy for tax reform, is going to come up with policies which benefit large corporations?

When public services are being cut, huge numbers of people are facing rendancy yet being told to work for nothing in " The Big Society" because we are "All in this together", is it fair that large and medium companies gain from an effective reduction in corporate tax?

Link here, (I hope!)

Sorry, didn't spot Granted's thread until I posted.

Speaking as a tax professional working for a bank, its not as simple as that.

There is anti-avoidance tax legislation in this country called the controlled foreign company legislation. Under these rules any "tax haven" profits that are owned directly or indirectly from the UK get taxed in the UK unless an exemption applies.

The exemptions are generally only where the company needs to be in the afforementioned tax haven eg a hotel in Bermuda which obviously couldn't be in the UK, or a bank in Jersey where all the customers where there.

Its very difficult to get out of the UK tax charge.

Its very difficult to get out of the UK tax charge.

But isn't that what the article says they are changing for medium and large companies with overseas earning?

Forever - as I understood the article, that's the situation at the moment - Osborne and his merry men intend to change that legislation so no tax is payable on subsidiary businesses based abroad where the profits are shipped back here. If Monbiot's analysis is correct, then it's one of the most shocking things I've heard in a long time. The Tories have introduced swingeing cuts (some disguised as cuts in local authority budgets so they can pretend that they have nothing to do with them), are in the process of effectively privatising the NHS (competition on price rather than value will lead to an apalling decline in standards of care), are planning on sacking vast numbers of public sector workers (not just faceless bureaucrats, but frontline workers like police officers) and at the same time are handing out an enormous tax break to the very wealthy. It stinks. We are not in this together, the Tories are a bunch of tossers, avaricious bastards and evil pricks.