Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

What is the Tax Justice Network really up to?

The Tax Justice Network has been running a strident campaign against tax havens, an issue which has been taken up by the British and US governments and was one of the matters discussed by the G20 meeting.

The mystery is why doesn't TJN go for a two-pronged attack? Most of the opportunities for tax avoidance arise due to the way that tax systems are constructed. If the tax systems are redesigned, then many, if not all, of the opportunities go away, and there is no need for draconian regulation and exchange of information between jurisdictions. TJN seems to have said nothing at all on this aspect of dealing with the problem of tax havens. This seems inconsistent. In its latest blog it complains about
  • Transferring assets to offshore tax havens that maintain secrecy to avoid IRS detection.
  • Fraudulently taking advantage of an exemption for portfolio interest paid to foreign persons.
  • Posing as foreign persons and taking advantage of U.S. income tax treaties.
If taxation is tied to land titles then there is nothing to transfer. UBR and Council Tax revenue is not lost to tax havens. And if taxation is tied to land titles, the nationality of the holder is irrelevant. Again, no UBR and Council Tax revenue is lost due to the nationality of the person or company liable for the tax.

The British UBR and Council Tax are bad examples of property taxes but they demonstrate the principle. Why does the TJN have this blind spot?

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...

Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...