Tim Worstall

‘Upstairs Downstairs’ Britain alive and well Over a quarter of all homes in Britain employ some form of domestic help in a demonstration that the ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ culture is alive and well, new research shows. No, just no. Despite the depressed economic climate, around 28 per cent of households regularly employ help on a regular [...]

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He approves of this statement: If the good governance of ISO9001 were extended to include, for example, the payment of tax in the country that produced the profits, would this not solve the problem of off shoring and other tax dodges? Corporate taxes should be paid where profits are made. He also, on the same [...]

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And I pop up in the comments: “the Ernst & Young Item Club now estimate that Britain’s large companies are sitting on a cash pile that between them that amounts to £750 billion. To put that enormous number in context, it is enough to fund the budget deficit from 2008-09 to 2014-15 inclusive. Rather than [...]

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It has for some time been sport amongst the big accounting firms, libertarian groups and certain parts of the Treasury to say I got that report wrong, claiming the gap I identified was just down to ‘legitimate’ tax avoidance. In itself that is an odd claim. By definition all tax avoidance is legitimate. That does [...]

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Splendidly vitriolic discussion of the various entries for the Wolfson Prize on how a country could leave the euro. We also get a Nobel Laureate recommending my approach to Ritchie: To paraphrase Krugman, most economists cannot believe that those who write about EZ breakup could be ignorant of basic economics. But many are. Most of [...]

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Of course, we’ve pointed out Ritchie’s error to him before. But still he persists in peddling his drivel. So what exactly has he got against charitable donations? It’s people spending their own money as they wish. Should be the State and the State alone as the source of all good things. You know, voluntary cooperation [...]

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Ooooh, this is fun. The Sunday Telegraph has established Mr Galloway has channelled his substantial media earnings through one service company and set up another such structure just seven weeks ago. OK, use of a personal services company. Pretty much anyone who has substantial earnings from a variety of sources should be using this sort [...]

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Over the Amazon tax thing: How can this happen? Because the UK’s ‘open for business’ policy is to not ask questions on tax. We’ll let a multinational do what it likes in its structuring to avoid upsetting them – inclduing letting them say that their sales really don’t take place here when they very obviously [...]

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Usual Guardian nonsense: Amazon.co.uk, Britain’s biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the country last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income – and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities. Quite. The company is based in Luxembourg. So, it pays corporation tax in [...]

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But then fumbles the implications of this. I’ve been telling him for years that there is a problem with his idea of country by country reporting. Which lies with the nature of the firm. As we know firms exist when the existence of the firm is adding more value than a simple network of contracts [...]

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Quite. Certain tax campaigners might like to take note. The law is and should be what the legislature has written down in the law. And when there’s a conflict about that law, the courts, in the open, with evidence n’all, decide what it really means. Not bureaucrats in darkened rooms. This is as true of [...]

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I’ve just noted their aggressive, and I think appropriate, response to Vodafone’s tax abuse, which they are tackling with retrospective legislation. Let us just remind ourselves of the Indian Vodafone case. Vodafone bought a telecoms company off one of the Hongs (Hutchinson Whampoa I think?). The underlying assets were Indian, but the actual companies involved were [...]

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Given how poor the private sector model of education is at preparing people for the reality of the workplace I very much doubt it. That would explain how the privately educated find it so difficult to get a decent job then I assume?

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“You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself [...]

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4. Support the broader goals of family, community and society and the achievement of purpose through identity; Dangerously close to Kinde, Kuche und Kirchen isn’t it?

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Searching Finance ‏ @searchfinance Tim Worstall extends hand of friendship to Richard Murphy http://wibi.us/p1fPlu 10:48 AM – 1 Apr 12 via Wibiya Bar · Details

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Dear Lord this is pitiful: Now, at the meeting at the Social Market Foundation I attended this week HMRC director Judith Knott confirmed that HMRC have accepted another key element of right wing tax dogma – which is that companies can’t pay tax and only people do. She explicitly questioned as a result why we [...]

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Remember the 10p tax fiasco, or his 0% corporation tax rate for small companies? Both were simplifications or apparent giveaways that went badly wrong. Oh, indeed. And who was it who wrote the canonical article about how to take advantage of this in a manner clearly not intended by Parliament nor within the spirit of [...]

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Paul B takes on Ritchie in comments. I do love the little intellectual judo bit: using as the basis of the argument a paper that Ritchie has already said he approves of. That paper Ritchie approves of showing that his current argument must be wrong. And as to the insistence that when discussing the economic [...]

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Ritchie insists that his entire career was tax compliant. That that’s exactly what his firm sold to clients. That’s a bit different from what his firm actually did isn’t it? Trivial Pursuit in Eire? Those pieces for The Observer? And some interesting (but not retellable) stories about how his form actually advised people over those [...]

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