FT:
Almost a third of the UK’s 700 biggest businesses paid no
corporation tax in the 2005-06 financial year while another 30 per cent
paid less than £10m each, an official study has found.
Of the tax
paid by these businesses, two-thirds came from just three industries –
banking, insurance and oil and gas – while the alcohol, tobacco, car
and real estate sectors contributed only a few hundred million pounds.
Altogether,
these large public and private companies paid £24.4bn in 2005-06, or
just more than half of all the corporation tax paid, according to a
National Audit Office analysis of the tax raised from the 700 companies
handled by the large business service of Revenue & Customs.
I’ve just had a look at the NAO site and can’t see the report. Anyone got a copy? Apart from hte obvious points about tax incidence, I’d love to see why the tax isn’t being paid. Is it, perhaps, because there are no taxable profits?
Update. Thanks to Bob Doney, the link to the report is in the comments. It’s actually the NAO looking at how efficient Customs etc is at getting the tax owed: the figures for who pays it are almost an aside, there just to show the sort of work they do. Why so many companies aren’t paying corporation tax isn’t discussed (or at least I didn’t see it in my skimming).
We have to assume that there aren’t any taxable profits there to be taxed: if there were, a report on how well the taxman does at geting the tax owed would have made more of this.
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