After his big speech yesterday saying that for the UK, the EU is all about the Single Market, David Cameron went for some Starbucks-bashing today among the elites at Davos --
Any businesses who think that they can carry on dodging that fair share or that they can keep on selling to the UK and setting up ever-more complex tax arrangements abroad to squeeze their tax bill right down. Well, they need to wake up and smell the coffee because the public who buy from them have had enough. And let’s be clear: Speaking out on these things is not anti-capitalism. It’s not anti-business. If you want to keep low tax rates then you’ve got to keep taxes coming in. Put simply: no tax base – no low tax case. This is the argument that has been made brilliantly by the economist Paul Collier *– and I am delighted he’s been advising my Government on this ahead of the G8.
Thus yesterday's advocacy of an emphasis of the right of any firm in the EU to sell any good or service in any EU country becomes today's we're going to need to look at where you're reporting your revenues before you get to operate here. Which sounds at least as intrusive as complaints about limits on working hours or regulation of the curvature of bananas, the normal bêtes noires of the Euroskeptics.
*link not in original.
Any businesses who think that they can carry on dodging that fair share or that they can keep on selling to the UK and setting up ever-more complex tax arrangements abroad to squeeze their tax bill right down. Well, they need to wake up and smell the coffee because the public who buy from them have had enough. And let’s be clear: Speaking out on these things is not anti-capitalism. It’s not anti-business. If you want to keep low tax rates then you’ve got to keep taxes coming in. Put simply: no tax base – no low tax case. This is the argument that has been made brilliantly by the economist Paul Collier *– and I am delighted he’s been advising my Government on this ahead of the G8.
Thus yesterday's advocacy of an emphasis of the right of any firm in the EU to sell any good or service in any EU country becomes today's we're going to need to look at where you're reporting your revenues before you get to operate here. Which sounds at least as intrusive as complaints about limits on working hours or regulation of the curvature of bananas, the normal bêtes noires of the Euroskeptics.
*link not in original.