According to the Financial Times “Britain is still the favoured tax regime of business…”.
Recent surveys have added a note of caution. Apparently, a growing number of organisations are concerned about the UK’s hardening attitude to tax avoidance. In an interesting twist in the mooted changes to international tax issues, UK resident businesses could be paying more tax to overseas jurisdictions and less to the UK Treasury.
The Chancellor will no doubt be mulling over these implications before his Autumn Statement announcements this week. Politically, he would seem to be under pressure to ensure that multinationals such as Google and Amazon, pay more tax in the UK on sales and profits earned in the UK; rather than “exporting” the profits to lower tax jurisdictions such as Luxemburg and Ireland. What he must beware is bowing to political pressures and creating a tax solution that means many companies, resident in the UK, will have to pay some of their tax to overseas governments, where they earn their profits.
Instead of increasing the tax take for the UK he may, effectively, reduce it…