also creating new loopholes, for example, in the Budget in March 2012, George Osborne slashed the tax rates on multinationals bringing in money from tax havens, losing the UK around £ 1 billion a year.
5. Can we ever get rid of tax avoidance? If not, why not?
Yes, or at least we can get rid of the vast majority of it. Making more effective laws in the UK, tackling tax havens – including the UK’ s giant network including Jersey and the Cayman Islands, and investing massively in staff at HMRC could all bring in billions more in revenue every year.
6. What is the estimated annual cost of tax avoidance lost to individuals? And to corporations?
According to research for the TUC, £ 25bn is lost every year through tax avoidance, £ 12.9 billion of this is from individuals and £ 11.8 billion from companies. A further £ 70 billion is lost through tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals. An additional £ 26 billion is going uncollected. Leaked Treasury documents from 2006 estimated the tax gap at between £ 97 and £ 150 billion.
7. Can we crack down on corporate tax avoidance without losing things like duty-free products and ISA savings accounts? Should we be cracking down on those as well? If not, why not?
ISAs were set up by the government and are available to all as a means of encouraging people to save. The ISA is also capped and the process is entirely transparent. Meanwhile, big corporations utilise large accountancy firms to find loop holes in the tax system. They utilise their global reach to maximise tax avoidance across borders. These schemes are not transparent and available only to the super rich or multinational corporations.
8. Will the General Anti-Avoidance Rule( GAAR) that the government is proposing work?
The GAAR the government want to introduce, would, by the government’ s own admission do almost nothing to tackle tax avoidance. Instead it risks legitimising most of the taxdodging done by big businesses like Starbucks or Google. If Osborne was serious, he would propose a real General Anti-Avoidance Principle that says if it looks like tax avoidance, it is tax avoidance, and is wrong – this measure would rake in billions.
9. How would we ensure that any new regulations would be followed by all and not manipulated by clever accountants and lawyers?
Not allow the accountants and lawyers to sit on the panels at the heart of government that craft the laws but instead allow a transparent, accountable and democratic process open to public scrutiny. revolutionise. it 21