UK tops competitiveness survey

For the first time ever, the UK has topped KPMG’s league of best countries to do business, ahead of Switzerland, the USA and France.
 
When asked which country had the best tax regime for doing business, senior tax professionals from Britain’s largest companies picked the UK above any other country.

The same report showed that more than three quarters of top executives said a country’s tax competitiveness influenced their decision of where to locate.

The Government is committed to making the UK an attractive place for the world to do business by creating the most competitive tax system in the G20. That’s why in the Autumn Statement 2012, the Government reduced corporation tax to 21 per cent, the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said,

‘We made a commitment to create for Britain the most competitive corporate tax system in the G20, and within just two and half years this report shows that is what the world’s leading companies now think we have.

‘These companies can choose to invest and create jobs anywhere, but are increasingly choosing Britain and showing that Britain can compete in the global race. It is a remarkable turnaround, and a tribute to the steps we have taken in Budgets this Parliament.’

Comments

Tim said…
Great ! Any chance that the likes of BT, Legal & General and Cap Gemini could end the outsourcing of IT jobs to India and employ people in Blighty again ? Maybe Slippery Cameron discussed this whilst visiting India recently.
Chris Whiteside said…
As he was there to improve trade, exports and relations with India I very much doubt that the PM would have done much to promote our exports or, therefore, to get more jobs in the UK, by making negative comments about Indian workers.

I'm not authorised to speak on behalf of BT, but I don't think I would be giving away any secrets by saying that the company has an enormous IT budget, which is bigger than the GDP of certain UN member states, and which includes both outsourced and "In House" jobs in the UK and many other countries. The lions' share of the billions of pounds BT spends on R&D and IT is spent here in the UK and creates, both directly and indirectly, tens of thousands of jobs here in the UK.
Chris Whiteside said…
Oh, and BT pays its' taxes in every country where the company operates, and with the bulk of the tax paid in the countries where BT does most of its' business, particularly the UK.

In 2012 BT raised and over three and a quarter billion pounds to the UK exchequer in tax, comprising £353m of UK Corporation Tax, £1,579m of VAT, £815m of Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Employees National Insurance collected, £318m of Employers National Insurance, and £189m of UK business and UK network rates.

In terms of UK turnover BT is five times the size of Amazon, but pays more corporation tax in the UK every year than Amazon would in a thousand years at their average rate of payment over the last eight years.
Tim said…
Rather a typical politician's answer: giving an answer to a question that was never asked ! Nobody is asking Cameron to make negative comments about Indian workers. The problem lies with companies in the UK obtaining visas for overseas workers under Tier 2 intra company transfer arrangements with the connivance of politicians, when there is a perfectly good home grown workforce to do the job. Surely, with 2.5 million unemployed(probably a gross underestimate) we should be focussed on getting as many jobs here in the UK as possible - not exporting them to a country that doesn't play the worldwide capitalist game on the same level playing field as ourselves.
If an inequality exists in the amount of tax that individual companies pay to the Exchequer then I would suggest that Gideon Osborne does something about it !
Chris Whiteside said…
You asked if David Cameron had raised the issue in India. At that point you appeared to be saying that companies should employ British people before others.

It would have been very difficult for DC to say that we don't want British companies to employ people from India without that coming over as a negative comment about Indian workers.

I want to see more jobs for British workers. The best way to get that is for all countries to remove artificial restrictions in the Labour market.

If you were meaning that you would like Cameron to encourage other countries to employ more British workers while we continue to employ theirs, then I agree with you, but that is not how the original comment came over.

India is very far from the worst culprit among our major trading partners with regard to such restrictions.
Jim said…
I am not sure what brought up the tax avoidance thing, but to me it just makes BT look quite dumb.

I am totally with Amazon, Starbucks and Google, tax avoidance is a duty not a crime.
I fail to understand how tax avoidance can be classed as immoral. It just can not. As for the term "aggressive tax avoidance", well that's just none nonsensical, its like aggressive sticking to the speed limit.
Jim said…
I would even go so far to say that those people who do think amazon, google and starbucks are in the wrong, are themselves morally bankrupt.

Please start a new post on "tax avoidance" and I shall explain all an we can discuss

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