“As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.” — Nelson Mandela
BREXIT has been a disaster for most of us, but a success for a few. Exit from the EU has meant the UK has escaped the regulatory practices and directives implemented by Europe relating to tax avoidance and can retain its position as the ‘go to’ country for more than a third of global tax avoidance. Government figures show the total cost of tax avoidance in the year 2018 to 2019 came to approximately £1.7 billion, while tax evasion was around £4.6 billion. HMRC has estimated that £4.6 billion in tax revenue was lost to evasion in 2018/19.
Let’s put a few names to those who benefit from tax avoidance. Famously David Cameron said he didn’t know whether the £300,000 he inherited from his father was the result of tax haven status in Jersey. Leave EU backer Arron Banks has money put away in Belize and was listed in the ‘Panama Papers’ as a shareholder of PRI Holdings. Jacob Rees-Mogg owns property company, Saliston, and is a major stakeholder in Somerset Capital Management, both registered abroad to avoid tax. He also had £500,000 in British Virgin Islands company, Lloyd George Management. Talking of virgins, Richard Branson paid no tax on the £229 million he made when selling his Virgin Music Group to Thorn EMI. He used tax havens in Jersey and Guernsey to avoid a United Kingdom tax bill of £92 million. Former Tory Party deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft, domiciled in Belize, has hundreds of millions of pounds in Bermuda’s Punta Gorda Trust Fund. I haven't listed the many tax-avoiding copanies such as Amazon, Starbucks, Facebook, Google, Boots ....
COVID: Surely no one can have benefitted from a global pandemic, but the British Medical Journal has concluded that, “The coronavirus pandemic has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale that is harmful to public health.” Billions of pounds have been paid to private companies in Covid contracts. Allyson Pollock, a member of the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, described it as “scandalous expenditure … This money should have been put into supporting the established system of public health services instead of going into new parallel services run by private companies, where much of it is squandered and wasted.”
Let’s put a few names to those who have benefitted from the Covid pandemic.They range from pest-control companies to publicans, experts in offshore investment to fashion, confectionary and interior design companies. Ayanda Capital, Clandeboyes, Clipper Logistics, Faculty, Family Office, Globus, Hanbury Strategy, Kau Media, Meller Designs, PA Consultancy, Pest Fix, PPE Medpro, Public First, Randox, Serco, Taeg Energy, Tower Supplies, Uniserve, Ventures Ltd.
This all takes place as the 1,000 richest people in UK are worth £771 billion. This is 6 times the NHS budget. Meanwhile14 million are living in poverty. And it’s getting worse
Sources:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/tax-avoidance-uk-cayman-islands-report-b1758986.html
https://www.ft.com/content/00de4f00-b754-11e7-8c12-5661783e5589
