You can’t say fairer than that
March 13, 2013Two interesting press releases land on my desk simultaneously today. (Well, the emails in my inbox… you get the idea)
First, from Christian Aid, there is this email with the results of some polling they have done, where their headline is that a third of the population are already boycotting some businesses products or services because they perceive the business’ tax planning to be “unfair”.
I find this enormously cheering. Because, although tax professionals have been standing on Cape Brandy for years and saying that “there is no equity in tax”, it appears that the perception of fairness is something else. Multinationals may have done nothing wrong – in the sense of, nothing which is illegal – in their tax planning, but they are being perceived as acting unfairly. And losing customers as a result.
Secondly there is this press release from ARC, the union of senior members of HMRC, where they remind us of their Budget submission of costed plans for reducing the tax gap by £8billion for an investment of a further £300m in HMRC.
Unlike Christian Aid’s concern, this isn’t about changing the way companies are taxed to make the tax regime fairer. It’s about collecting what’s already due under the existing legislation that the rest of us have to abide by. And you really can’t say fairer than that, now can you?
tiintax 
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