taxation

Sep 05 19:03

High Wire

By: Ciarán Tags:

I suppose there's going to be a lot of crowing about how Gordon Brown's failure to get energy companies to pony up £1bn worth of fuel vouchers for the least well-off. Certainly Brown has some serious problems with his, um, capacity to persuade (things are bad when I agree with classics-my-arse Clarke).

But on this occasion I'm not so sure that his failings are all that bad a thing. The government has an opportunity now to really think about a long-term energy policy. And I think that taxes can do some of the heavy lifting for consumers here. Instead of taxing on profit, we should tax energy companies based on how energy efficient or inefficient their customers are so that companies would have a huge incentive to focus on their customers' energy efficiency.

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Aug 28 07:10

Corporate Taxes? Highly Illogical

By: Ciarán Tags:

It's good to see the Conservative Party, through the otherworldly presence of John Redwood, arguing strongly for the tax burden on UK business to be reduced (the full report, in pdf format, is here). And it's good to see Ireland's low corporate tax base cited as a warning: if British taxes aren't reduced, globalised businesses might just head to kinder climes where they wouldn't have to fork out so much to government.

Just one thing.

How are we to reconcile a fear about the tax burden on business with the fact that almost a third of the 700 top British business paid not one single penny in corporation tax during the 2005-6 period? Or that another third barely paid any? This, I fear, will require a more advanced mind than my own...

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