A windfall for Fat Cats - Labour must oppose Corporation Tax Cuts in Finance Bill 2015/16

In the immediate aftermath of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s failure to oppose the Welfare Bill, its MPs with the sole exception of Dennis Skinner abstained on an amendment to decline a second reading to the Finance Bill 2015/16. As well as insuring income tax rates will not rise in the next 5 years, the Bill proposes a raise in the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million and further cuts in Corporation Tax (reduced in 2 stages to 18% by 2020). All of these measures will deplete public finances and intensify the squeeze on public services. http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2015-07-21&number=52&showall=yes#voters

A spoonful of sugar helps the tax go down...

It is becoming almost a daily occurrence to discover the scale and depth of tax avoidance by multinationals but this latest one I hope makes you think twice before buying Silver Spoon sugar, Kingsmill bread, or Twinings teas. These household brands are produced by Associated British Foods and, in their Zambian operations, have been found by Actionaid to weave a web of tax avoidance on such a grand scale they have paid virtually no tax in spite of multi-billion dollar operations:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/09/british-sugar-giant-tax-scandal

UNISONActive instant reaction: Don’t believe the hype – this is a budget by the wealthy for the wealthy

Today’s Guardian has a headline that the “Osborne budget is a Showcase for Coalition Values". Indeed it is. It is a budget based on the values of greed and avarice, displaying the economic sense of the proverbial dead parrot and ignorance of the devastating consequences of Tory policy on millions in this country.

Tax Avoidance: Finding who's not paying what

An NAO report shows about a third of the UK’s largest companies paid no corporation tax at all. But they won’t tell us who they are. http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0607/management_of_large_business_c.aspx

Democratise the economy and tax the rich

In clear echoes of what UNISON, the TUC and the STUC amongst others have been saying for some considerable time, Iain Macwhirter makes the case for taxing the banks and the super-rich and putting money back in the pockets of the middle classes. He challenges the conventional economic wisdom that high taxation stifles enterprise and therefore economic growth arguing that exactly the opposite is the case. (Global economic Armageddon is nigh – so let’s tax the rich, Sunday Herald 7.08.11) http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/iain-macwhirter/global-economic-armageddon-is-nigh-so-let-s-tax-the-rich-1.1116148

Let the Corporations be unleashed?

News that the leaderships of the UK’s devolved nations met to discuss their commonalities over a cup of tea in Edinburgh has been rather benignly reported in most of the media at a UK level: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-scotland-13597189