Caroline Lucas’ bill fights taxdodging
Caroline Lucas’ office have announced that her anti-tax dodging bill is due for its second reading on Friday:
Caroline’s new Tax and Financial Transparency Bill, which could help the UK recover billions of pounds of lost tax by forcing companies to be more transparent in their accounting, is on the agenda for debate in Parliament on Friday (10 June).
The Bill, launched by the Brighton Pavilion MP in March this year, is due for its second reading in the House of Commons – and will also feature on BBC Radio 4’s Decision Time programme tonight.
The Green MP launched her campaign after posing a number of Parliamentary Questions to the Chancellor, in which she exposed the fact that H M Revenue & Customs is failing to prevent serious tax evasion which could amount to as much as £16 billion in lost tax.
A report published by Tax Research UK in March revealed that around 500,000 companies “disappeared” from the UK’s Register of Companies in the year to March 2010 – with billions being lost to the Exchequer as a result.
Caroline believes that urgent measures are needed to stop companies that are formally dissolved from trading fraudulently, thereby undermining honest businesses who do pay their taxes.
She is also calling for a requirement on multinational companies to publish information on where they make their sales, record their profits and pay their taxes, in order to ensure that corporations make a fair and proper contribution to society.
Caroline said: “The first aim of this Bill is to tackle the scandalous reality that around 500,000 companies every year appear not to be paying tax in the UK.
“Tax Research UK estimate that regulatory failures by H M Revenue & Customs and Companies House mean that around 500,000 companies a year fail to pay their tax or file their accounts.
“A great many are simply struck off the Register of Companies as a result, never to be heard of again. It is thought that up to £16 billion of tax a year might be lost to the country as a result.
“This Bill would ensure that banks have to provide details on all accounts they maintain for companies operating in the UK so that H M Revenue & Customs and Companies House can chase those companies who do not file the returns they’re obliged to make for the missing information – and the tax they owe.”
She continued: “Secondly, the bill would force companies to ‘publish what tax they pay’, requiring all companies filing accounts in the UK to include a statement on the turnover, pre-tax profit, tax charge and actual tax paid for each country in which they operate, without exception.
“If they only trade in the UK, this has no impact on them. This information would, however, mean that the answers to the questions asked of Barclays Bank earlier this year about where it earned its profits, how much profit was recorded in tax havens, and where it paid its taxes could be answered for all companies trading internationally.”
The Brighton Pavilion MP added: “This information is vital if we are to ensure that multinational corporations make a fair and proper contribution to our society.
“Companies cannot opt out of corporate social responsibility – and paying tax to the country that provides them with their opportunities to trade is an essential part of it. You can’t be socially responsible and accountable unless you say where you are and what you do in each place that you trade.”
Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), said: “This bill goes right to the heart of the economic issues facing our country.
“If the Government was serious about protecting the most vulnerable people in our communities from the cuts, it would start investing in tax collection and proper regulation so that companies are not allowed to simply disappear without paying the taxes they owe.”
Progressive politicians should try to be the Parliamentary wing of progressive movements. It is one thing for MPs, severed from activists, to say things we all agree with. It is another for them to genuinely use their position to help contribute to the movement who put them there in the first place. And so it’s great to see Caroline helping keep the spotlight that UK Uncut have shone on tax dodging firmly in place. Similarly, it’s good to see the PCS – who are not affiliated to Labour – continue their streek of broad movement building solidarity.
Let’s see how many Labour and Lib Dem MPs will be willing to back the bill.
This bill’s second reading is now due on November 25th [http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/taxandfinancialtransparency.html]; it would really help if pressure were put on MPs to ensure it gets read this time by voting on the associated petition at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/18996
Here’s hoping it can make some headway!
almost bound to fail,but glad that doesn’t stop her trying.
Unfortunately that is almost certain. Its placing in the agenda tomorrow makes it almost impossible that it will be reached within the time available.
One of the big problems with Parliament is that it is so utterly controlled by the major parties, and the government especially, that backbench or small party legislation generally can only proceed with the whips’ permission.
Private Members’ Bills have a shockingly poor record of making it to the statute book unless given government time, even though a great many of them are relatively uncontroversial with support across the House.
And of course this one isn’t even uncontroversial – it strikes at the heart of the corporate interests whose wholly-owned subsidiary, the Conservative Party, is in control of the chamber.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t vanish in a fog of filibuster, though I’m not optimistic. There are many vested interests floating around in the House of Commons.