Tax avoidance as bad as sweatshops say charities
Alongside other campaign groups, the charity ActionAid launched a report this week (PDF) arguing businesses needed to think about ‘Tax Responsibility’ or they faced an increasing risk of damage to their reputations.
The report came just days before Treasury minister David Gauke warned that British companies had failed to engage in the debate on tax avoidance and adopted a bunker mentality.
ActionAid’s Martin Hearson said:
So far businesses have reacted to criticism of their tax avoidance by denying any responsibility. This is exactly how the fashion industry reacted when claims of ‘sweatshop’ abuses emerged in the 1990s.
Just as fashion companies who failed to take these allegations seriously incurred major reputation damage, so businesses accused of tax avoidance need to respond with more than reflex denials.
The group’s briefing argues that ‘tax responsibility’ must take into account three key insights:
1. compliance with the letter of the law is no longer sufficient to protect business from the risks associated with tax planning
2. lack of transparency around tax planning leads to increased risk
3. the structures and practices of tax planning are at the heart of tax responsibility, rather than the amount of tax paid, which is an outcome of these practices.
A few weeks ago, African tax authorities met specifically to discuss allegations made by campaigners that brewing company SABMiller had avoided millions of pounds of tax in Africa.
This week, Treasury minister David Gauke warned of the “tension” between the economic case for reducing burdens on business and public’s tolerance for “abusive behaviour” over taxes.
Just as transparency can lead to greater tax certainty, and an earlier resolution of tax issues, in time I believe it can lead to a more informed public debate on tax.
It’s impossible to miss the intense scrutiny that tax affairs have come under in recent years by pressure groups and newspapers. Across the board, the public expect greater openness.
That’s not going to go away, And given that I believe it is in your long term interests to engage with this discussion.
Even Treasury Ministers are subtly acknowledging that the likes of UKuncut have shifted the debate on tax avoidance.
Rupert Murdoch’s problems in the US have grown exponentially
Yesterday I reported that a US Senator had called for regulators to examine whether News Corporation had broken any laws. And there is chance he could have. Yesterday evening another Senator joined that list.
Now it has gotten much worse. And later today or tomorrow, we launch our own campaign with allies in the US to push for the SEC and the DOJ to look at whether News Corporation has broken any US laws.
continue reading… »
The ‘perfect victim’ theory of rape, and how it’s reported
contribution by Sian Norris
There is a pervasive rape myth that influences a lot of the ways newspapers and mainstream media outlets continue to talk about rape. Feminists call this the myth of the ‘perfect victim’. It is a myth because of course a perfect victim does not exist.
But what this myth does is create a false divide between victims and survivors of rape who the media consider ‘innocent’, and victims and survivors who the media paint as blameworthy, or guilty of ‘causing’ the rape.
continue reading… »
Rusbridger: NotW more thorough than Stasi
In an interview with the New Statesman published tomorrow (not online yet), the Guardian’s editor in chief says:
The [New York Times] established that the NoW was tracking, as well as hacking, phones, using specialist police technology at £300 a pop. Think about it – the paper was able to locate any politician, footballer, celebrity or grieving relative at any time of day or night to within yards.
It’s called total surveillance. Not even the Stasi could do that.
I don’t think the analogy is wild.
In fact, the Guardian have already started cover this (next) stage of the scandal, publishing an article this week on the practice of ‘pinging’.
Senior journalists at the News of the World paid police officers to find celebrities or other people they wanted to write about by tracking their mobile phone signal, it was reported on Tuesday.
The technique, which was know as “pinging” in the paper’s newsroom, pinpoints handsets by using mobile phone masts to measure the strength of their signal, according to the New York Times.
Its use normally has to be authorised by the police and security forces with the mobile phone networks on a case-by-case basis under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), in which a request signed by a senior police officer is sent to the network authorising the location of the phone.
I couldn’t find the NYT article mentioning ‘pinging’, but I do know there is much more to come on this.
Update: Aha, the correct NYT article (Guardian linked the wrong one) is here (thanks @EvidenceMatters).
It says:
Separately, an inquiry by The New York Times, which included interviews with two former journalists at The News of the World, has revealed the workings of the illicit cellphone-tracking, which the former tabloid staffers said was known in the newsroom as “pinging.” Under British law, the technology involved is restricted to law enforcement and security officials, requires case-by-case authorization, and is used mainly for high-profile criminal cases and terrorism investigations, according to a former senior Scotland Yard official who requested anonymity so as to be able to speak candidly.
According to Oliver Crofton, a cybersecurity specialist who works to protect high-profile clients from such invasive tactics, cellphones are constantly pinging off relay towers as they search for a network, enabling an individual’s location to be located within yards by checking the strength of the signal at three different towers. But the former Scotland Yard official who discussed the matter said that any officer who agreed to use the technique to assist a newspaper would be crossing a red line.
“That would be a massive breach,” he said.
Wow.
Tory MPs welcome “scrap NHS” report
Tory MPs including John Redwood and Dominic Raab have welcomed a new report by the Institute of Economic Affairs, which sets out radical plans to cut public spending, and claims support from 70% of the public. Amongst the proposals which the IEA have suggested are the following winners:
- Introduce “top up fees for schools”, where parents pay around a quarter of the average costs of educating their children, and allow private companies to set up new schools, receive money from the government and make a profit.
- Scrap the pupil premium and Sure Start, reduce the number of nursery places within primary and infant schools, scrap free early education for 2-4 year olds and childcare vouchers, and instead “encourage more private sector provision”.
- Scrap the NHS and replace it with Singapore-style private health vouchers.
- Reverse plans to link the state pension to earnings, and scrap the winter fuel allowance, TV licenses and free bus passes.
- Privatise all social housing stock, and make flat rate housing benefit payments which pay less attention to the cost of housing in different areas.
- Remove tax credits from part time workers, to encourage them to work full time in all the new jobs which the private sector will create.
- Scrap all railway lines which don’t currently make a profit, and phase out all subsidies for bus travel, on the grounds that “Such transfers can be challenged on economic grounds, however, because they redistribute resources from productive individuals to non-productive individuals, thereby hampering the creation of wealth.”
- Introduce VAT on public transport fares, and deregulate the private taxi market so that people who used to use the bus to get around can instead travel by low cost taxi.
- Privatise the motorways and introduce road pricing to charge motorists to use them, and give residents in urban streets the “right to buy” their roads.
- Take an “anti-interventionist” approach to climate change, for example by cutting government spending on tackling climate change but instead imposing VAT on food.
This summary barely scratches the surface, and the full report is here. It is a kind of Encyclopedia Wingnuttia which brings together every half-baked, utopian, daft right-wing libertarian idea into one handy reference guide.
The IEA argue that “in light of public opinion the proposals in our report no longer look so “radical” or “brave”; these are mainstream ideas backed by supporters of all parties.” This is based on a polling question which asks people, “If the Government were to reduce its spending to 30% of national income, the Government would have less money to spend, but each household would get a pony and pay around £7,500 less tax on average. Would you support or oppose this reduction in government spending?”
While we hope that the Tory Party will listen to the IEA and adopt their manifesto in full at the next election, what is perhaps most interesting is that when right wingers talk about “government waste”, it turns out that what they mean are things like the NHS, free nursery, primary and secondary schooling, trains, buses and free use of motorways.
Why hedge funds do better than bent bookies
Hedge funds have got one major advantage over bent bookies. In their case, race fixing is entirely above board. Let me expand on this point, by way of an analogy for what has been happening in the Irish, Greek, Portuguese and Italian economies of late.
Let’s say you take a bet on a horse to lose the Grand National, something that those of us who do the gees gees know as a ‘lay bet’. But in this case, you get access to the paddock, and have every opportunity to bribe the jockey or dope the nag. You can even throw ball bearings, or perhaps the odd suffragette, under its hooves once it is on the track.
What’s more, the Jockey Club – a bunch of bleedin’ useless aristos who are never particularly assiduous in these matters, anyway – can’t see any harm in all this, and doesn’t even make a pretence of trying to stop it.
How News Corp. could have broken US law
If the News of the World did indeed make payments to corrupt police officers, as it is alleged, how were they recorded in its accounts?
That question could quickly become key if US officials start paying attention to the scandal this side of the pond.
News International – which owns The Sun, The Times, Sunday Times and formerly the News of the World – is a fully owned subsidiary of News Corporation. The latter is a publicly traded company in the United States.
So News Corporation has to file its accounts in the US and is subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
As the ProPublica blog explained last night:
If you’re entirely honest in the company’s internal books and enter the payment as a “bribe,” you’ve just created an irrefutable piece of evidence that can be used against you and your company in a prosecution by the Justice Department for violating U.S. statutes against overseas bribery. If, as is more likely, you file an expense account which refers to the cash payment as “taxis” or “office supplies,” you stand a chance of being pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for keeping fake records.
News International Limited, the British arm of the Murdoch empire, is a subsidiary of News Corp., a publicly traded American company which also owns The Wall Street Journal and Fox News (not to mention the Sunday Times of London, The Times of London, and the British tabloid The Sun.) Because of this, experts say, News Corp. and all of its subsidiaries come under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a Watergate-era law which makes it a crime for U.S. companies to participate in bribery abroad.
If found guilty, the US Justice Department could fine News Corporation for estimated commercial benefits of those alleged bribes. This would require estimating how much the scoops were worth to the former Sunday paper.
Unfortunately for Murdoch, a powerful US Senator urged regulators yesterday to look at whether News Corp has violated in any US laws.
“The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals–including children–is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics,” said Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Chairman John D. Rockefeller in a press statement.
“This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated,” he added. “I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe.”
Earlier this week, an American group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to lawmakers, urging them to investigate News Corporation.
Rupert Murdoch’s problems have just gotten a whole lot bigger.
David Cameron’s astonishing attack on GPs
On any normal news day, Cameron’s astonishingly cynical and ignorant attack on GPs would surely be headline news. Here it is, from his Privatise Everything White Paper speech earlier this week:
People with money can get friendly with their local GP at a dinner party, maybe see them out of hours if there’s an emergency. In this world of restricted choice and freedom it’s the poorest who lose out.
First, there’s the idea that people seek out a GP when they have an “emergency”. What world is Cameron living in?
continue reading… »
Why the Sun’s front-page is likely to backfire
The Sun newspaper has this front-page today, with a feeble attempt at defending itself.
It still doesn’t address the central point: where was the public interest in exposing Brown’s son’s cystic fibrosis?
It’s unlikely most people will look at that and take the newspaper’s side – no one would want details of their children’s illness to be exposed in such a way.
The Sun says today its source was a member of the public whose family has also experienced cystic fibrosis, and “had links” with the Brown family. But what kind of an idiot would expose someone else’s son’s medical condition to raise awareness of an illness while remaining anonymous themselves?
On Twitter last night, the response to the Sun’s front page was overwhelmingly negative.
A poll by YouGov last week found only 9% of people now think tabloid reporting is fair and accurate, with 71% believing it is not.
The chances that Britons will mostly take the Sun’s side over that of a grieving father is highly unlikely.
Time for another boycott campaign?
Osborne’s corporation tax isn’t working for the economy
Amid the ongoing News International fallout and the developing Eurocrisis, yesterday’s FT carried quite an important story on the likely failure of a key component of the government’s growth strategy.
Osborne has made boosting investment a core pillar of his economic strategy – something I entirely agree with. I have written at length on the need to boost business investment and also on the problem of the corporate surplus.
The problem is that Osborne’s preferred strategy is simply to cut corporation tax and hope for the best.
continue reading… »
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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