Taxation: Avoidance

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I am grateful to the usual channels for providing time for this debate and to the Treasury Minister for coming to the Front Bench at this time. I apologise to him that it is lunchtime—although a slightly late lunchtime because of the previous debate—and I welcome his visit to deal with this important and thorny matter. He is a very busy Treasury Minister and I wish that I could have saved him having to do without lunch on this occasion. I hope he can catch up with that later.

I declare an historic interest as a former member of the London Stock Exchange for many years and as a partner in a leading institutional stock broking firm, as well as a shareholder in other former City interests.

The title of the debate deliberately uses the word “avoidance” because of the grey area of avoidance leading into illegal evasion as well. The title focuses deliberately on the behaviour of business representatives and groups because that really covers almost the whole field. Most wealthy individuals, as well as companies, who seek to lower their tax liabilities tend to arrange schemes through accountants and other professional advisers. Equally, however, it would be reprehensible if non-business sector individuals were either avoiding tax unfairly or evading tax illegally through their own decisions without advisers. I have sought to raise this issue for some time because of the widespread public concern that one hears here, there and everywhere that improper tax avoidance is widespread in the UK. These matters are very sensitive right now because of the bank bonus season as well—we of course assume that our senior bank director colleagues declare and pay tax properly. Bank bonuses and whether they are justified are not within this subject. It is because rumours are so often an inadequate substitute for facts that HMG need to answer questions from Members of Parliament to allay concerns.

Of course, the concept of unfairness in the tax system is hard to grasp. The public as a whole has a strong and maybe unfair impression that ordinary taxpayers, mostly but not all subject to the deduction at source system, do not have the sophisticated advantages of professional and corporate taxpayers to soften what some people regard as the hammer blows of brutal tax demands. Add to this the widespread feeling that, unfortunately, our colleagues in the main part of the coalition seem psychologically far more interested in giving lower-income individuals rather a rough time by cutting into their social benefit payments than pursuing their—dare I say?—friends in the world of business over tax dodging, then we have an explosive political cocktail about the relentless growth of the unequal society. That is mercifully nowhere near the lamentable position in the USA, with its by-now medieval inequalities, obliging even Warren Buffett to complain yet again recently. Personally, I have a cousin in California who is a member of the Libertarian Party that regards any tax apart from defence spending and foreign affairs as positively poisonous and communistic.

In the excellent debate on financial crime legislation launched by my noble friend Lady Williams on 17 March last year, I raised what I called the “sad” case of Sir Philip Green—that is at col. 385 of Hansard—who was able to channel his £1 billion-plus dividend from his brilliant and skilful reorganisation of BHS through his wife as a resident of that little territory, Monaco, and thereby avoided paying, I think, £200 million or more in income tax on the dividend. Far from condemning outright this pathetic example of sheer greed, the new coalition Government later hired him as a totally ineffective adviser on efficiency in government. We do not find it hard to imagine how ordinary struggling families feel when they see such goings on in Britain. Could HMG ask HMRC to contact Sir Philip to see whether he could persuade his wife to reconsider and possibly make a voluntary donation to the Revenue as a gesture of social solidarity in these tough times, especially since apparently several hundred Topshop stores are now to close because of the fierce recession? No wonder this sad little saga spawned the UK Uncut movement.

I intend to stay within the time limit of my speech but unfortunately the monitor Clock is incorrect and I do not know when I started. I hope it will be adjusted as quickly as possible.

Of course, I expect the Minister to say on these matters, as ever, “We do not comment on individual cases”. I understand that, but the lack of accountability then speaks volumes and the public can draw their own conclusions. At least he might today try to reassure us that the colossal tax dodging that apparently occurs routinely in Britain nowadays is being dealt with. Despite some enlargement of the personnel at HMRC in recent times, it is by all accounts still struggling manfully—and womanfully, I assume—to cope with the huge backlog of dodgy schemes.

Why is it, as I hinted in that same debate in March last year, that if, for instance, you go to dinner parties in large houses in Wiltshire or Oxfordshire—I do not know about Chadlington but maybe elsewhere, too—around the table are people who appear to be in the UK a great deal but who scoff when someone says, “I pay full taxes”? Perhaps they are just boasting and making it up, but all sorts of rumours swirl around.

The absence of definitional precision helps that process of confusion and the shrugging of shoulders. Hence statistics on tax avoidance are fiercely contested and the interpretative basis is elusive. In a court of law for example, the judges presumably base their findings on what Parliament intended in any laws and regulations. That examination alone can spawn huge fees for yet more lawyers and accountants. For instance, I am assured by friends in so-called professional circles that a large number of senior broadcasters in both the public sector—that is, the BBC—and private TV and radio services routinely have corporate plans of their own that offer much bigger offsets than personal taxpayers can claim paying tax as individuals, even though these broadcasters are of course individuals. Can the Minister help here and give us any information that the Government might have to hand?

HMG have regularly referred to what they consider to be more than a £40 billion tax gap—“gap” is the word I use here. On the assumption that it would be somewhat higher because HMRC struggles to cover all cases, if everyone who should pay paid up—like ordinary mortals—that would cover a good chunk of the deficit. However, we are struggling philosophically because HMG keep banging on about corporation tax being too high. Is a 50 per cent income tax rate so excessive when it starts at such a high level? We must be careful in this country to avoid the worst horrors of the Tea Party lunacy in America that progressive taxes are worse even than communism or a proper national health service.

What is the latest development on redress policies in the many other secretive tax havens dotted around the world, partly as a result of our historical British Empire? Are the UK and other authorities locally in those areas getting to grips with the most severe abuses—and abuses in general?

Our newspapers, reflecting the reality that most—with some honourable exceptions—are owned and run by non-UK taxpaying moguls who live all over the place but not the UK, probably do not want to run too many stories about UK tax dodgers. They prefer benefit fraud, as in the Daily Mail. That is a much more attractive story for them to run. Naturally, the practical difficulties for the authorities here in dealing with these problems are huge. I sympathise entirely and once again express appreciation for what the Minister and his colleagues have been trying to do in the Treasury.

We know all too well from the world financial crisis of 2007-08 that business anywhere is truly international, global and incredibly complicated. It is hard to keep up with the worldwide legions of tax advisers—often themselves multimillionaires as well. Look how enormous the biggest UK-origin accountancy firms—the famous names—have become as worldwide entities, usually in very large towers. I remember the furore last spring when it was discovered that the Treasury had missed out on some £17 billion of tax due from companies disappearing, along with their directors, or banks and other groups not paying their taxes properly. More than half a million companies were dissolved in 2009-10, with most removed from the official register because they did not even bother to file accounts. Indeed, the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation estimated last year that nearly a million companies failed to pay tax at all, even though presumably only a small proportion of those were not trading. Richard Murphy, a well-known director of the consultants Tax Research LLP, calculated that the total tax gap in Britain two years ago was over £120 billion. No one knows whether that is correct, but it is obviously likely to be significantly higher than the £40 billion mentioned by the Government on several occasions recently.

I hope that the Minister can reassure the House today that these estimates are ahead of the true figures. My anxiety is that, in reality, not even the Treasury, hardly known for its huge competence in guiding the ever-faltering British economy in recent decades, actually knows the truth. In replying to the debate, I hope that the Minister will also refer to the tax treatment of the overseas subsidiaries profits in UK-registered corporations which seem to be of special artificial help to the banks in recent times.

Finally, he may generously wish to guide us with his analysis of the cash-only economy—the black economy—which obviously deprives the Inland Revenue part of HMRC of yet more tax revenues, and how the authorities have managed to deal with VAT fraud and evasion. I am sure that the Government do not wish to give the impression that they are much keener on cuts in services than getting in more tax from what is apparently regarded in the City—some people repeat this again and again—as an army of tax dodgers in Britain.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend and that the Clock was not working properly. I thought he would find it helpful to know that he has exceeded his 10 minutes.

[Lord Dykes]

Because of the Clock, I conclude by referring to Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who said on Tuesday that tax dodgers have nowhere to hide and that we will get them. I would be grateful if the Minister commented on that comment from the other place.