UK Uncut. UK Uncut (UKuncut) UK Uncut: In London? Sports Bloc - o... UK Uncut. UK Uncut on Newsnight. UK Uncut. Photo : yfrog.com/gzeouwj - Shared by OldHoborn. Make stories - storify.com. Should companies offer to pay more tax? 17 December 2010Last updated at 14:32 By Mark Broad Economics reporter, BBC News UK Uncut supporters have already held a series of protests across the UK Flash mobs, sit-ins and superglue stick-ons are not usually events you would associate with the rather staid world of corporate taxation.
But this weekend in towns across the UK tax protesters will be employing these tactics in their campaign against what they claim is widespread tax evasion. The event has been branded Pay Day and has been organised by a group of activists under the banner of UK Uncut. Their list of targets reads like a Who's Who of some of Britain's biggest companies, with Vodafone, Barclays and Topshop all expecting a visit from the group's army of campaigners. Formal lobbying for tax reform in the corridors of power has been replaced by a self-styled "tax enforcement society" marching from shop to shop disrupting their trade.
Monaco Sir Philip Green, owner of fashion retailer Arcadia, is one of UK Uncut's targets. @WikiUncut. UK Uncut - Big Society Revenue & Customs. Payday (payday) Manchester Anti Cuts (MancAntiCuts) Captain SKA - Liar Liar. Tax protesters to target Vodafone and Top Shop | Business. Protesters against corporate tax avoidance plan to target Vodafone and Top Shop outlets in more than 50 towns and cities around Britain tomorrow in the biggest day of action by the UK Uncut group so far. The action, on traditionally the busiest pre-Christmas high street shopping day, will also be aimed at other stores – but the main focus will be Vodafone and outlets run by Sir Philip Green's Arcadia group. The protests are organised locally – UK Uncut is a loose alliance of activists with little formal structure – making it hard to gauge the scale of tomorrow's events, but the group's website has a list of more than 50 planned demonstrations around the country.
Most are likely to involve sit-ins of the sort which forced several branches of Vodafone and Top Shop to close briefly a fortnight ago, among them the latter's flagship store on Oxford Circus in central London. Daniel Garvin, of UK Uncut, said the group was aware that high streets would be extremely busy. Taxman let Vodafone off £6bn bill. By Daniel MartinUPDATED: 08:30 GMT, 16 September 2010 Controversial tax boss Dave Hartnett agreed a deal to let Vodafone off a £6bn tax bill, it emerged yesterday. Let off: Vodafone escaped a £6bn tax bill In what was described as an 'unbelievable cave-in', the HMRC's permanent secretary for tax allowed the phone giant to avoid paying vast amounts of tax on profits racked up by a subsidiary based in a tax haven. The disclosure comes after it emerged that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had undercharged 1.4million Britons a total of £2billion in tax and would be claiming it back.
Last week Mr Hartnett was forced by Chancellor George Osborne to issue a grovelling apology. The agreement between HMRC and Vodafone came after negotiations-between revenue officersand John Connors, Vodafone's head of tax. The saga began a decade ago when Vodafone bought German engineering firm Mannesmann for 180bn euros. But it was ruled that the deal broke anti-tax avoidance rules. Tomorrow is Pay Day! « hannamade. The ethics of tax avoidance. The Ethical Corporation published an article yesterday under the title “Corporate disclosure: the tax blame game”.
It said: It’s too easy to demonise big companies that take steps to minimise their tax liabilities [but] in most developed societies, companies have the right – as do individuals – to arrange their affairs in such a manner as to minimise the amount of tax they pay. It is legal, even honourable. After all, a company that goes bankrupt because it paid more in tax than it needed to would be neither responsible nor competent.
The flavour of the article can already be gathered – that I can recall no company has ever gone into liquidation because it paid more tax than was necessary. As will be noted below, arguments in extremis are a characteristic of this debate, and do it no favours. The author seeks to redeem himself by saying: The maxim only holds true, however, so long as the degree to which you can minimise that liability passes some kind of intuition test about fairness. ÔÇ? Johann Hari: Protest works. Just look at the proof - Johann Hari, Commentators. This mood is wrong. It doesn’t have to be this way – if enough of us act to stop it.
To explain how, I want to start with a small scandal, a small response – and a big lesson from history. In my column last week, I mentioned in passing something remarkable and almost unnoticed. For years now, Vodafone has been claiming that a major chunk of its business should not be subject to British taxes - that could run to billions of pounds - because the deal was routed through a company in ultra low tax Luxembourg. Then, suddenly, the exchequer – run by George Osborne – cancelled almost all of the outstanding tax bill, in a move a senior figure in Revenues and Customs says is “an unbelievable cave-in.” The Indian government and Vodafone are fighting in the courts over the billions in tax it is claiming from the company. Many people emailed me saying they were outraged that while they pay their fair share for running the country, Vodafone doesn’t pay theirs.
You might ask – so what? Big Society Revenues & Customs | Campaign. Campaigners are planning to protest outside Topshop, Barclays and Vodafone branches tomorrow as part of the UK Uncut ‘Pay Day’ event. The group claims various organisations are underpaying tax by £25bn. Most alarmingly, they do not accuse the “tax thieves” of breaking any laws and accept that the disputed figures are simply derived from their opinions about what the law on tax ought to be. Vodafone, for example, is alleged to have been “let off” paying £6bn in taxes by UK Uncut’s reckoning. Vodafone denies this. HMRC have called the figure an “urban myth”. “How can it be fair to close libraries, sack public sector workers and hike up student fees while there are people who are exploiting loop holes and not paying their way in this country.
The ideas behind the campaign are both morally disturbing and practically dangerous. But it’s not just the moral issue. Rory Meakin Rory is the Research Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Ask and ye shall receive #ukuncut. Photo by QOFE. Photo by QOFE. Photo : yfrog.com/h0zo6jj - Shared by AndyShuttle. Book bloc #payday #ukuncut #mademesmile. Topshop tunbridge wells occupied! #ukuncut #payday @UKuncut. Snowy protest in tunbridge wells! #ukuncut #payday @UKuncut. Back to TopShop! #ukuncut #payday @UKuncut. Solidarity to protesters in Brighton #ukuncut #payday -'stop the tax dodgers' banner up on BHS. Photo : yfrog.com/h4fgczj - Shared by chunkylimey. Photo : yfrog.com/h08ixoj - Shared by fearlessknits. In vodafone. Liveblogging UkUncut Payday Actions.
Stefanie Wood's photos - Dorothy Perkins Bristol shut down #payday #ukuncut #bristol | Plixi. Plymouth. London. Birmingham. Tunbridge Wells. Brighton. Share photos on Twitter. Topshop on princes street still closed. #ukuncut. Brixton. Photo of the London BHS #UKuncut #payday shutdown! It's. And the other entrance to topshop in Edinburgh. #ukncut. BHS in Tunbridge wells! Lovely day for it. #ukuncut #payday @ Photo : yfrog.com/h05m1bj - Shared by fearlessknits. Photo : yfrog.com/h36p8rj - Shared by fearlessknits. Photo : yfrog.com/gycqxsj - Shared by mikemarcus. We're in HSBC Covent Garden sleeping rough, cos their ta. Photo : yfrog.com/h4clhdj - Shared by tomfollett. Staff lock the doors at topshop Edinburgh. #ukuncut. Share photos on Twitter. Photo : yfrog.com/h2r07lj - Shared by faithLDN. #payday Vodaphone closure in Manchester - proud of all the de. Share photos on Twitter. Share photos on Twitter.
Pay Day Wrexham success « Wrexham Socialist Party. Yesterday, traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year, was a national day of action against corporate tax dodgers, such as the owner of clothing retailer Arcadia group and government adviser Philip Green, who channels his vast income through his tax exile wife, and Vodafone, which avoided a £6 billion tax bill with the agreement of the UK government. Whilst working class people are being forced to pay for a crisis not of their making through vicious cuts and job losses, this government - and the previous government - have been happy to allow the rich to swerve their taxes, leading to a tax gap of £120 billion per year, according to prominent tax expert Richard Murphy. In Wrexham, Wrexham Socialist Party, North Wales Shop Stewards Network and North Wales Against Cuts called a protest against Vodafone under the UK Uncut banner.
We were able to pass letters to the workers inside, to explain that our protest was not against them but against their bosses and the government. Some thoughts on the UK Uncut demonstrations. The UK has seen a wave of high-street demonstrations under the banner of the UK uncut campaign, many of which have been organised locally following call outs distributed through the internet. The protests have seen a number of stores associated with Tax-Dodging picketed, occupied and flyered in cities and towns up and down the country. The targets of the campaign have been pretty specific. The most high-profile company to be taken on has been the UK-based telecoms giant Vodafone, which is the most profitable mobile phone operator in the world. Earlier in the year veteran investigative magazine Private Eye broke a story on Vodafone's successful tax-dodging, which had involved setting up a subsidiary company in Luxembourg purely to route profits from the company's acquisition of Mannesman through a country with a more agreeable tax regime.
There are evidently positive aspects to the protests, but some of their limitations are immediately striking.