Aug 28 2007
“UK companies did not pay enough tax ” - the BBC
One of the disadvantages of working at home - because Parliament remains shut - is I get to hear the wonky voice of BBC current affairs at lunch time as well in the morning.
The World at One excelled itself today, with a feature on the one third of large companies who did not pay any UK corporation tax for the 2004-5 tax year.
They did not tell us how they defined large, where these companies also operated, or tell us how many of these companies were loss making in the UK.
The journalistic thesis was “This is a scandal. Let’s charge them tax on interest they pay on debt”
A pleasant Oxford Professor let them down, by pointing out that companies might set up more of their profitable activities in Ireland to pay 12.5% tax instead of placing them here at 30% tax. \He made an excellent point, but not one that fitted the left wing idea of the day.
A spokesman for the CBI reminded people that this related to 2004-5 profits year and some companies were still losing money then.
The Inland Revenue magnificiently said they were sure all these companies were paying the right amount of tax owing, and that tax reliefs were there for a good purpose.
The BBC made no effort to set out how much National Insurance, income tax on salaries, Stamp duty, environmental taxes, fuel duty, Congesiton Charge, capital gains and other taxes these companies are contributing. As always they seemed quite incapable of understanding that lower tax rates yield more revnue because more people set up in business here, more large and small businesses invest here, and make more profits here.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
The state-sanctioned BBC deliberately like mislead the public by presenting conjecture as fact. Tax and disincentive are inextricably linked. When will the tax-apologists realise that the more we tax business the less business is able to grow. We need a growing business community to create the jobs that our country needs. The BBC are in hypocritical position in relation to tax. The BBC itself is a tax, and a very expensive one at that. Someone in the higher echelons of Conservative party really ought to set up a body dedicated to pushing for the eventual privatization of the BBC.
The journalistic thesis was This is a scandal. Let’s charge them tax on interest they pay on debt
I’m sure it would - but there is still the gaping hypocracy of lefties wanting to tax private corporations for borrowing - when we all know full well the public sector borrows at times of low interest rates ‘because we’ll probably never get it cheaper’ not to fund improvements in service, but just to spend needlessly and boast about it.