Why is the UK not on the list
"The (perfectly legal) gig is this. You set up headquarters in a low-tax country – looking at you Ireland and the Netherlands – then licence your product out to other EU countries at very high cost so that you barely make a profit."
That's rather a simplification of things. Without a suitable British Overseas Territory (Bermuda, Caymans, BVI, Turks and Caicos) to act as a final (tax free) repository for the profits, none of the schemes would work. Double Irish and Dutch sandwich only work if profit ends up outside the EU.
The UK and the US control the majority of the tax havens, both in number and volume of cash. If they wanted too, 90% of the tax evasion in the world and 99% of stolen loot could be recovered. But it turns out that the great and good who run the place need the plebs to keep paying taxes, but wouldn't dream of doing it themselves.
In my opinion the only way to deal with this is to make it accessible to everyone. If every business ran it's tax affairs like Apple* or Amazon, if every worker had 100% of their wage go to a BVI investment company, which then loans them the money, then forgives the loan = no tax.
I wonder how long it would take for comprehensive tax reform if poor people stopped picking up rich people's tab.
I also feel income tax is one of the more unfair forms of tax. And before the hate rolls in, I do get taxed on my assets (4% of their value gets added to my income). An asset tax would solve some real issues of inequality. 1% on everything over 10 million is a good bag of fag packet system.
* I think they managed to have their profits being paid to a company that wasn't in ANY country for the best part of a decade.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
