why are we letting this happen

[swallowthree]

Barclays £1.6 bn tax dodging, Boots stashing its cash in a Swiss bank account to avoid tax, Phillip Green using his wife for tax avoidance - while services for the most vulnerable are being cut and benefits squeezed. Why are we all letting this happen ?

Chil1234 the last government also took billions in taxes from people with jobs and used 650 of those billions to bail out the banks.

@georgeorwell... you accused me of 'creeping out of the woodwork' and said views like mine were 'quite depressing'. I never stoop to kneejerk name-calling FWIW. However, I still think if you want to only hear views that chime with your own, you're in the wrong place.

@Wook... the last government took billions from the banks and used them to give wealthy people tax credits, child trust fund vouchers and all kinds of other wastes of time. BTW 650bn was only offered as security - it never left the coffers. Far less was used to buy shares in RBS etc....

If everyone on MN and IRL who is outraged by the tax dodging and horrified by the cuts agenda was in the SWP I'm pretty sure the revolution would have happened by now Chil!
It's not an extreme point of view to look at the situation, apply a bit of logic and come to the conlusion that something is very wrong here... that's why UKUncut turning a bank into a library is a very witty and apposite response- far from 'moronic' and not remotely 'violent'

i'd love to trade opinions chil and am always of an open mind but exactly that exchange gets prevented by simple outpourings of pregudice.

If by 'wealthy people' you mean families where both parents work full time but still find that there's nothing spare each month then I think we have a different definition of 'wealthy' Chil

So Chil that 650 billion that never left the coffers.... when can it be used to pay off the deficit or pumped into public services then?

anyway to get back on topic. we are letting this happen as are all too busy on MN to begin a revolution. must go sell SWP paper now! not alot of rabble rousing to be got up to on here.

Barclays / Boots / Topshop can't leave the UK altogther because if they did it would be hard for the UK consumer to access their shops/banks!

Barclays have moved many things out of the UK when there has been a tax incentive to, eg their PPI insurance is based in Ireland.

I read that the Barclays low tax this year was just because of losses on loans from the prior year (ie if you make a loss on something you get tax relief on it in the future).

Barclays are not tax dodging. All companies are allowed to offset one year's loss against the next year's profits. It's a normal part of accounting.

Now is a good time to protest, with the referendum coming up. The Tories are scared of a voting system change, so although our power is limited, it's not nothing.

The tax system is to blame. That, and the fact that big businesses and corporations bankroll the political parties, in part at least. It's all joined up behind the scenes. I believe the reasons are 1. our awful tax system 2. the canny accountants who know where the loopholes are 3. public apathy, not exercising rights and 4. the government's unwillingness to change things because financially they are bankrolled by these organisations.

So there. I won't bother writing to our Tory MP, he's the biggest joke that ever existed. Jacob Rees-Mogg! What a treasure.

@Wook... £80bn approx. was paid out for banking shares and this added to the total national debt. Other money was made available by the BofE to guarantee banks' financial obligations. The BofE can, of course, print more money if necessary but this will lead to inflation. The ongoing deficit is £150bn a year... the current difference between revenue and expenditure.... the BofE cannot pay this off.

missmehalia your 3rd point re. public apathy is prob the most important but is engendered by a sense of impotence and tarring all politicians with the same brush.

people power is achieving so much now in other parts of the world and could here too but it means literally getting off our collective arse. there's a demo 26 march in london called by TUC which could be a first step towards showing the govt to back down and back off. go on their website for more info.

it's weird though that i know about this strike and i live abroad whereas not alot of people in blighty itself seem to know of it yet.

Criticise the tax system by all means. But don't forget that if blanket changes are made, this could cause great difficulties not only for large companies but also for small businesses, who may find it difficult/impossible if they could no longer offset one year's loss with a profit the next year.

wook because I believe all taxation is theft

Jacob Rees Mogg is a really lovely man. Meet him personally before passing judgment.

We have a huge population of relatively affluent people that they can make money out of. A slightly smaller heap but a heap none the less.

The rich buy or consume less than the poor which is why VAT affects the poor disproportionally.
If I own 60 acres I can grow my own food, wood for fuel, have red diesel for my farm vehicles etc etc.

Happiestblonde in that case, I take it you wouldn't want to be an accessory to a crime, and you have therefore never walked on a pavement, driven on a road, used an NHS hospital, state school, walked down a road lit by a street lamp, been glad a murderer or rapist has been arrested and imprisoned, received a letter or sent one.... all paid for by theft, it's criminal madness everywhere you look!! The robbing bastards in government who pilfer our taxes from us have gone and created an infrastructure for us all to live in, lock them up!

Chil so this 650 billion then- is it in the economy or not? If it had not been used to secure RBS and others, where would it be? Or does it not exist? In which case, how could it cause inflation?

www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data

Was interesting reading over lunch

The £650bn was made up of £80bn in actual bank share purchase, the BofE 'Special Liquidity Scheme' and other measures around securing short-term loans and guarantees i.e. to be paid back relatively quickly. The SLS was not the same as spending cash in the economy, more about using national reserves short-term to keep money moving around normally - something the credit crunch almost halted.

So, who profited from the 80bn of share buying? Sounds like a case of th emany paying for the few, but I'm happy to be proved wrong if you can tell me that that didn't go into the pockets of a small number of people.
So, as for the other 570 billion, how much of that has been paid back so far then, if these were short term loans and guarantees? Is it coming back -with interest, as a normal loan would- to the taxpayers??

There's no such thing as 'free money' :) The short-term loans (typically 3 years) made in 2008 have interest charged on them which goes back to the BofE reserves together with the capital. Buying shares in a company means making a capital investment i.e. money to be used to grow/develop the business or, in this case, save the business from going bust. Major shareholders also influence board decisions. At some point in the future, when the banks the taxpayer invested in are reprivatised, the value of those shares will be returned to the Treasury... most probably way in excess of £80bn because banking share prices are historically low at the moment.

Hmm Chil you didn't really answer my question, but I look forward to 'At some time in the future'. It's funny that bonuses can be paid now though isn't it? I mean, if I had taken a consolidation loan for my credit cards, I wouldn't then go on a billion pound spending spree to reward myself for my sound financial masterminding, whilst promising that 'at some point in the future' I would return some of my loan to my creditors....

Happiestblond, it is not a personal judgement I feel qualified to offer, it's a judgement as to his effectiveness as our MP. I have already had a number of email exchanges with him regarding changes to the voting system. I was not impressed.

I suggest you separate the personal from the professional. He only got in by default.

And his election campaign was a joke, he got caught out big time falsifying photographs showing him with members of his prospective electorate - some of them were photoshopped together because they were so scarce. Don't get me started. I don't like dishonesty.

Re: bonuses' being paid now:

My DH works in the City, and says the permanent staff of a bank he knows well were recently paid bonuses in shares, deferred in chunks for a year or more, so they can't sell them off straight away. It makes the bonuses politically more palatable and, of course, the bank itself would be well pissed off is its shares were dumped on the market immediately (causing the price to tank).

NB: it's not a UK bank, so its "domestic" situation is a bit different.