Westministenders: Canada Plus and the Transition Phase

[RedToothBrush]

As we approach the 31st January, we slowly tick towards exit and transition.

Things are not yet signed off though the No Deal planning has quietly been stood down with no press release and the government have said they won't talk about trade deals post 31st Jan because the public are bored of them and don't understand.

The new EU president has said that the UK doesn't have time to make a full deal with the EU before 31st December with a deadline which isn't flexible.

We still have no idea what the government plans are. We still have many EU citizens feeling very vulnerable.

Perhaps we should start talking about this rather than Royals for a couple of weeks...

Maybe there are different breeds of trade wonks !
Or I missed updates, always possible.
Do you have some links about needing both directions ?

BCF: See the attached pic (source: HM treasury ) and also the two pics in this Peter Foster tweet, which also come from Treasury sources.

https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1202956486940471301?s=21

We were just having that discussion about the virus and our stocks over breakfast RTB. The thing that pricked my ears this morning was the idea that large supermarkets are being closed.

I sure hope they've an effective way of getting food into Wuhan, else there's going to be a large angry city on China's hands.

@spec
There was an opinion peice in the guardian yesterday - saying brexit is not "done" we need to start talking about it again...... I'll see if I can find a link

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/22/brexit-not-done-start-talking-about-it?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Fintan O'Toole taking no prisoners (I might also post a link to this somewhere else )

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-historians-will-not-believe-sheer-ignorance-of-brexit-supporters-1.3695347

"... our future scholars will have to try to distinguish between three kinds of ignorance: deliberate unknowing, crass self-delusion and what we can only call pig ignorance^...

...
^
Thus, for example, David Daviss^ sincerely believed the EU is just a front for German domination of Europe. Hence he also believed quite genuinely that the Brexit negotiations would be conducted not with Brussels but over a convivial weissbräu and schnitzel in Berlin and that frictionless trade would be decreed immediately because the German car manufacturers wished it so: sincerely fatuous self-delusion.

And then there’s pig ignorance – the genuine hallmarked, unadulterated, slack-jawed, open-mouthed, village idiot variety in which the people who are in charge of the British state don’t know stuff that anyone off Gogglebox could tell them. The Brexiteer MP Nadine Dorriess^ admitted in effect that she didn’t know what a customs union is. Her comrade Andrew Bridgenn^ said last month: “As an English person, I do have the right to go over to Ireland and I believe that I can ask for a passport. Can’t I?” "

Put it another way:

It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad.
It's knowing they're foreign that makes them so mad.

Interesting story that Trumps visa restrictions have been upheld despite some whining from the IT sectors

www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/22/tech_firms_visa/

the thing is, it's hard not to back Trump on this one. Stopped clocks and all that.

Thanks for the link, Misti
I hope those govt trade wonks are filling in all those question marks

Fintan o'Toole is probably the best writer on Brexit
Carol Cadwalldr has done brilliant work on the dark money & manipulation, but not many other British journalists have done their professional job wrt the biggest peacetime crisis / disaster the Uk has faced

There has been good Brexit coverage from surprising sources eg Peter Foster in Telegraph (now moving to the FT), Peter Oborne ex of the daily mail for some of the human interests questions around the personal impact on people in Northern Ireland in particular.

As a general rule the FT has by far the best coverage of Brexit issues.

Carol Cadwalldr has done brilliant work on the dark money & manipulation

She was a surprising - but excellent - guest on the Russell Howard Hour last year ...

www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/23/french_digital_tax/

Of course, having forced France to back down, President Trump’s next move will be to threaten the UK with the same tactic. Blighty also has a digital tax due to come into force in April this year – two per cent as opposed to France’s three per cent – and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Trump was planning to pressure British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to drop it too when The Don meets Bojo this week in Davos.

The UK tax is meant to be a temporary measure until a European tax is agreed, and it’s not clear whether Johnson wishes to risk a confrontation with Trump at the same time he is desperate to move forward on a trade deal with the United States in order to bolster Britain as it leaves the European Union.

If the UK backs down – Chancellor Sajid Javid has vowed not to – Trump then only has to bully Italy, Austria, and Canada into dropping their digital tax plans. Which he may well do but while the president will be able to claim victory for his form of diplomacy, experts warn that it will only redouble Europe’s efforts to agree a tax across the whole of Europe in place in time for 2021

A 2% tax is absolute chicken feed to the likes of Google and Amazon but could bring a non trivial amount to the government, stick to your guns Saj I say.

A 2% tax is absolute chicken feed to the likes of Google and Amazon but could bring a non trivial amount to the government, stick to your guns Saj I say.

Let's role play that one a bit more then, shall we ?

Let's assume "The Saj" does stick to his guns and we can both agree he has (notice all the get outs already ....). And HMG presents Google with a tax bill of an order of a few hundred million.

Google take a look at it, say "That's nice dear" and proceed to do fuck all to pay it.

"The Saj" gets his gander up and decides to get really tough with them. After all, who do they think they are they can tell "The Saj" what to do ?

What next ? Will we see Google assets in the UK (there aren't any, by the way) seized ? Will we see Google employees held until Google pays ?

Will we see the great UK firewall turned on to prevent access to Google ? And when that happens, how will all the Brexiteers continue to try and run rings around the law with their gmail accounts ?

I look forward to your thoughts.

You sound very confident DGR so I'm prepared to believe that you know more about this than I do. Nonetheless

After a minute or two of searching (on Google obvs )…

about.google/intl/en-GB/google-in-uk/

Google appear to have 3 offices in the UK and plan to increase their office space and their number of employees from 4000 to 8000.

So, they very clearly do have some assets in the UK, and some people and I'm guessing at least a small number of those people are employed to ensure that the company complies with the tax arrangements in this country.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43566751

This jumped out at me from the above article:

"Google UK also operates as a marketing and sales arm of its European operation which is headquartered in Dublin, where corporation taxes are lower."

"It (Google UK) pays a substantial "administration fee" to its European parent to operate across Britain."

So one remedy for non payment of taxes due would be for the government to end this (advantageous to Google) wheeze....

"If you want to operate in Britain, you HQ needs to be in Britain and taxes due need to be paid here"

You sound very confident DGR so I'm prepared to believe that you know more about this than I do.

I'm beginning to see how Boris did it ...

Nonetheless [] Google appear to have 3 offices in the UK and plan to increase their office space and their number of employees from 4000 to 8000.

Yeah, well. Let's wait and see, shall we. I'll be honest I am flying a few kites here, but I would be surprised if it turned out Google owned assets and employed people directly. Just because it says "Google" on the door, and indeed payslips don't make it so. Something I learned ages ago when it emerged that "W.H. Smith" don't actually run some shops in motorway services ....

Anyway, as I say, time will tell. I'm going to predict there will be some sort of fudgey fudge fudge whereby it appears "the Saj" has cracked the whip and Google have gone "how high" for public consumption whereas the reality is whatever happened where no one could see it.

Have Vodafone paid those billions in tax yet ? That's probably a better indicator as to the odds of "The Saj" succeeding. I haven't forgotten, even it the rest of the UK has. I'm like that at times.

"If you want to operate in Britain, you HQ needs to be in Britain and taxes due need to be paid here"

(more role playing)

OK, now how would you stop Google operating in the UK, pray tell ?

I honestly don't have an answer to that DGR I'm afraid the details of legal compliance to operate in the UK are not something I know about. I don't know if they have to be licenced to offer a service here?

I am assuming at a minimum the have to be registered with Companies House to trade here, so their registration could be rescinded and Google UK effectively forcibly dissolved.

Theoretically, apparently the government has powers within the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to shut down the internet but in practice it is claimed they couldn't work effectively because of diverse routing.

I am assuming at a minimum the have to be registered with Companies House to trade here, so their registration could be rescinded and Google UK effectively forcibly dissolved.

Look up any multinational - eg Alibaba - and see if they are registered at Companies house

I honestly don't have an answer to that DGR I'm afraid the details of legal compliance to operate in the UK are not something I know about. I don't know if they have to be licenced to offer a service here?

So - and this isn't a slight or deliberate obtuseness - you and I have no real way of knowing whether "The Saj" will have succeeded or not beyond having him say he has and you nodding ?

One of the oft-cited reasons for doing business in the UK is how easy it is comparatively. We don't really do the big state when it comes to people buying, selling and setting up businesses. Having had (mercifully few) run ins with the behemoth that is the Italian state, I know exactly where I'd rather do business (so did my DF ).

I am assuming at a minimum the have to be registered with Companies House to trade here, so their registration could be rescinded and Google UK effectively forcibly dissolved.

If there is such a requirement, I'm not aware of it. Of course there are advantages to being UK registered - the standing to take people to court for a start. But as far as I know it's not generally compulsory. (There may be certain exceptions in certain industries ...) however there's no requirement for a company that operates in the UK to have any presence whatsoever in the UK. How do you think 80% of eBay gets away with it ?

Theoretically, apparently the government has powers within the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to shut down the internet but in practice it is claimed they couldn't work effectively because of diverse routing.

"The Internet" isn't a thing. It's a collection of systems and processes. Whereas laws are just smudges on paper with no inherent power. Given how much of "the internet" the government doesn't realises exists, I'd be amused and interested in equal measure if the UK tried to "do a Russia" and isolate it's internet. But again, lazy thinking, no imagination, and a tad too many Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger films and this is what you get.

incidentally, while we are talking imagination and "just do it", why isn't the UK doing Starlink ?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation)

12,000 satellites - sounds ambitious enough. Bearing in mind they are doing this now. Not in 5 years. Not in 10. Now. Where's the UK ? Oh, that's right, we've got to recreate Galileo first.

Not sure how the UK plans to stop people in the UK accessing Starlink ? Replacement bus service ?

Interesting about "the Saj" I'm liking it. Surely we'll know if he's succeeded by whether a Digital Services Tax makes the statute book, and if it does how much of it the internet giants pay? If it doesn't become law, or it does but raises nothing because the internet giants can get round it, demonstrably he will have failed.

I'm afraid I have higher standards Louise. Almost any government can pass a law (and this one certainly can). As I say, laws are just smudgy paper. The acid test is enforcing said law.

Also "failure" is a moveable feast. Champagne corks popped and are popping over the Bedroom Tax and Universal Credit. Both changes have been a resounding success - much more than anticipated. Ministers are very happy with them and continue to be so.

So we'll have to see about "The Sajs" big ideas in months to come.

I don't know anything about Javid's bill but it sounds like the previous government's (in)famous porn-permits, or the Cameron government's plan to leave the ECHR. Both quietly shelved as unworkable (after wasting a bunch of public money) to precisely zero réaction from the public or media who had been cheerleading those policies.

The British public basically has the attention span of a hamster, which is how governments get away with terrible policy.

Brexit will probably go the same way, eventually.

I don't know anything about Javid's bill but it sounds like the previous government's (in)famous porn-permits, or the Cameron government's plan to leave the ECHR. Both quietly shelved as unworkable (after wasting a bunch of public money) to precisely zero reaction from the public or media who had been cheerleading those policies.

So early into the new year, and I already feel my "cynic of the decade" crown slipping

The PornoPass certainly was signed into law, but the implementation (i.e. details) are still being thrashed out (if that's a suitable way to phrase it ?).

I'm pretty sure that the porn pass was dropped by the past and present culture secretary Nicky "don't need your votes, plebs!" Moron in the middle of last year.