You may have heard of UK Uncut? They’re certainly good at attracting attention: forcing their way into Barclay’s bank the other week and
managing to close a branch of TopShop temporarily.
But what they have in noise they lack in substance. New research by the Institute of Economic
Affairs exposes how the ‘grassroots movement’ want Vodafone to pay tax in the UK on the profits it makes in Germany. It’s a reasonable principle – taxing companies
based on where they are domiciled is fine. But they also want Boots, a Swiss company, to pay tax in the UK on the profits it makes selling items to Britons, from British shops. You can have one
principle or the other, but not both – not unless we want businesses to locate elsewhere. In fact, corporation tax systems are carefully designed with reciprocal agreements between countries
for the very purpose of ensuring that profits are taxed once and not twice.
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