Boots the tax dodgers

The latest attempt by the Tories to attack Ed Miliband has backfired.

The Billionaire Italian boss of Boots the Chemist, Stefano Pessina. told the Sunday Torygraph if Labour politicians acted in the way that they spoke “it would be a catastrophe”.

It turns out that the billionaire does not pay any tax in the UK and lives in Monaco. Also that Boots has avoided £1.21 billion in corporate tax dodges since 2007. Enough to have employed nearly 85,000 new NHS nurses.Check out Richard Murphy at tax research UK

When you consider that 40% of its turnover is from NHS prescriptions you start to realise how corrupt the senior management of this once proud UK company are.

As a pension trustee and representative of asset owners I consider all companies who avoid paying their fair share of taxes as being run by thieves. If they deliberately don't pay their taxes then what other immoral and corrupt practices are taking place in that Company? Executive pay fiddles? Bribery? Child labour? or destroying the environment?  If you have a company culture that sees nothing wrong with depriving pensioners and hospitals of money then there is obviously a huge governance risk.

Expect similar "dog whistle" attacks by the rich and powerful against Ed Miliband and Labour in the run up to the General Elections. The millionaires who back the Tories do not want to pay their fair share of taxes and will do anything to defeat Labour.

"Fair Tax" is the New Sexy "Fair Trade"

Recently Richard Murphy, the respected "anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert", spoke to a Business meeting of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) about the "Fair Tax Mark" campaign he has helped found.

"The Fair Tax Mark is the label for good taxpayers. It is for companies and organisations that are proud to pay their fair share of tax"

Richard told us that the issue of "tax" has become sexy in the UK and elsewhere. In the last 5 years the general public "has got it". It now beats the level of director pay as a top issue of public concern.

Tax is also now a core governance agenda. Tax avoidance creates an investor risk since boycotts by consumers who have no choice but to pay their own taxes impacts on on cash flows and makes business valuations uncertain. The "Fair Tax Mark" was started in  Feb 2014. It is UK based and rates company that don't avoid taxes - a better risk for investors.

Proper transparency and disclosure of tax policy, risk and liabilities is key.

I asked a question about what was the economic cost to Amazon for being exposed as cheating on its taxes. Richard said he did not know but pointed out that Npower had lost significant numbers of valuable customers when they were exposed by the Daily Mirror for avoiding £100 million of tax by having  a head office in Malta. Also even John Lewis Partnership has been damaged since it will not disclose what it does with its accounts in the Isle of Man.

One of my favourite quotes is from the American Supreme Court Judge, Oliver Wendall Holmes, who said "I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilisation.”

Labour Bloggers Beer & Sandwiches at TUC

I am just back from a very good evening out. First stop tonight was a seminar on trade unions and blogging, organised by the TUC. I had been beforehand at an interesting meeting in the UNISON Headquarters on Pensions and Capital Markets (which I hope to post upon). I had got the TUC event timings wrong so I arrived late for the seminar and missed most of the speakers.

It was aimed at TUC affiliated union's communication and policy officers. It was very well attended (about 25 people). I had missed the presentations by Tom P (Labour and Capital) and Paul Evans (Never Trust a Hippy). I came in during the middle of Richard Murphy's (Tax Research UK) talk about his blog. Some useful points he made was that you should always make posts very short. You need to recognise that there is a different writing style with blogs compared to traditional journalism or report writing. He also recommended that that you make links and post comments on sites that you find things interesting to support them, since with blogging you can feel isolated at times.

The excellent informal TUC blog Touchstone was discussed and explained. There was a general recognition that blogging helped you keep your edge, it made you think about your views and what are your politics. “I don’t know how I think until I write it down”. Labourstart blogger Eric Lee was there as well and he made a fair point that there was a lot of rubbish blog's out there and we must not get forget other media mediums (and that not enough time to ask questions at this workshop!).

Afterward we went off to the TUC Christmas Communications and Media party. I met up with Paul Smith again, the deputy Labour leader of Islington Council Labour group who does IT work for unions. The event was a busy and buzzing with media people. We did note that many newspapers and media groups did not have any “industrial correspondents” anymore. News regarding trade union issues is often presented along with “business news” and usually portrayed unions in a poor and negative light.

Picture is of Tom, Paul, me and John W (Johninnit). We couldn’t find Richard.

Afterwards some of us had a beer or three at a local hostelry and put the world finally to rights.