Private justice, public loss

Private justice, public loss

  A UK company which forms part of one of the world’s largest oil trading multinationals is paying 80 percent of its profits to another part of the multinational in the low-tax Swiss canton of Zug — shrinking its taxable profits in the UK. Our new...
Naming and shaming isn’t working

Naming and shaming isn’t working

There are different reasons for not paying due tax: from genuine mistakes to criminal fraud. At the more serious end of the scale is evading tax liabilities on purpose. Deliberately providing HMRC with inaccurate or false information. Deliberately failing to tell them...
Big corporates: tax heroes or tax sinners?

Big corporates: tax heroes or tax sinners?

Today the National Audit Office (NAO) publishes its first assessment in over a decade of how effectively HMRC is chasing the missing tax revenues of Britain’s biggest companies. TaxWatch was pleased to give evidence to the NAO’s enquiry, whose headline...
Are small businesses tax dodgers or tax victims?

Are small businesses tax dodgers or tax victims?

Parliament’s Business and Trade Committee argues in its latest report, released yesterday, that tax compliance is crushing small businesses. Aside from concerns about tax levels and thresholds (about which there is much more to say, especially regarding VAT and...
Recognising the right tax heroes

Recognising the right tax heroes

On Saturday the Sunday Times published its annual ‘Tax List’ – the celebratory counterpart to its better known ‘Rich List’, claiming to list the people that are the country’s top individual taxpayers. As in previous years, the list has fueled claims that millionaires...