Government urged to tackle the City’s role as a tax haven for global corporations

War On Want has published a report, Secrets and Fries, calling on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to investigate McDonald’s — and for Whitehall to tackle the City of London’s role as a tax haven for global corporations.

The company’s creation of a British tax shelter through a circular paper transaction that moved franchising rights between Singapore and London, enabled McDonald’s to shield its global franchise income from tax in this country. More incidental information on this may be read about this here.

War On Want urged HMRC to investigate the transaction and the company’s current structure as its “primary purpose appears to be to create a tax avoidance scheme.” The group’s economic justice campaigner Owen Espley said:

“In 2020, McDonald’s workers were paid poverty wages for pushing sales through the roof, while McDonald’s shareholders received a record pay out, inflated by the hundreds of millions of public funds (Covid-19 support) that flowed into McDonald’s.

Source: article (James Salmon lead author)

“Furlough provided a lifeline to more than a million businesses across the UK and protected nearly 12 million jobs — with businesses passing all the money they received from the scheme on to employees.” The report recommends that:

• Parliament must take action to close loopholes and shut down tax schemes that rob public coffers and restrain economic recovery.
• Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) should rigorously investigate McDonald’s affairs
• Policy makers should address the City of London’s role as a tax haven for McDonald’s and other multinationals,
• looking to rebalance economic rulemaking in favour of workers and the communities in which multinational corporations operate.

And international efforts to address multinational tax avoidance should take place within the United Nations to ensure that all countries are able to participate on an equal footing.

 

 

 

 

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Information technology: fragile, costly and unreliable

TechRadar summarises: dependence on IT has become ingrained, with most lines of business, from finance to marketing, being unable to function without their core IT systems. Its research indicates that a single major technology failure can cost a business as much as £6.9 million”

A Financial Times article recalls the judge who has called the Post Office’s insistence that the software was infallible “the 21st-century equivalent of maintaining that the Earth is flat”.

“Technology failures are becoming increasingly common, with high-profile cases in the news on a regular basis. Companies are fire-fighting problems on a daily or weekly basis and haemorrhaging money while damaging the long-term health of their organisation in the process.

“There is an average of 25 full-scale outages that take down a global site every day, which means that even if a business is doing everything right from their end, they can still suffer downtime and loss of sales due to problems with third-party services”.

Frequent technology outages remind us of the fragile nature of modern infrastructure

TechHQ reports that financial services provider Allianz Group found that business interruptions and cyber incidents such as IT failures, outages, and data breaches were the two leading global business risks for 2019.

A study of technical outages at UK banks found that daily IT failures were common across the six leading banks, with one major incident occurring every two weeks.

It recalls the IT outage suffered by UK’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ)  that derailed critical IT systems like the Crown Prosecution Service, the Criminal Justice Secure Email system (CJSM), and the court hearing information recording system for an entire week. Legal professionals in the UK were unable to access either the court Wi-Fi system or email services from the MoJ. The outage affected hundreds of MoJ websites, preventing jurors from enrolling and delaying hearings for minor offenses by more than two weeks.

The scandal of the subpostmasters’ experience (see this post ) has drawn attention to the errors.

Marina Hyde (right) deplores the deference paid to IT even when its errors are exposed, citing two fatal errors:

⦁In 2015, in one three-year period, 2,380 sick and disabled people died shortly after being declared “fit for work” by a computerised test and having their sickness benefits withdrawn.
⦁ Social media algorithms have published content which has contributed to teenage children committing suicide.
⦁ TechRadar adds new 737 Max Boeing plane, Lion Air Flight 510, crashed shortly after takeoff. Then another did the same. Everyone aboard died. In each case, pilots had struggled against an autopilot system that took over and plunged the planes to their doom.
⦁ ExoPlatform reports that on March 13, 2015, the Paderborn Baskets, a second division German basketball team, was relegated to a lower division for starting a game late, due to a necessary 17-minute Windows update to the scoreboard’s laptop.
⦁ In late 2007, Queensland selected IBM Australia to set up a new payroll system for the 80,000 employees of Queensland Health (QH). The system did not go live until late 2010, with major defects and an additional cost of nearly $25 million. QH had to hire another 1,000 employees to undertake the payroll manually, adding $1.15 billion over eight years.
⦁ JAMIA (health & medicine) problems with health information technology are affecting care delivery and patient outcomes. Problems with IT can increase the likelihood of new, often unforeseen, errors that affect the safety and quality of clinical care and may lead to patient harm
⦁ A study of technical outages at UK banks found that daily IT failures were common across the six leading banks, with one major incident occurring every two weeks.
⦁ Software glitches are putting thousands of people at risk of paying hundreds of pounds too much tax next year, as programmers struggle to cope with an increasingly complex tax system.
⦁ HMRC are allocating funds to urgently address issues with ageing IT technology. (See parliamentary committee on HMRC’s problems with Concentrix)
⦁ HMRC pushes ahead with digital tax drive, even as it admits data security failures (Telegraph).

And the Public Accounts Committee finds that “The most concerning of all for contractors is that what HMRC actually charges is WRONG. It collects more than is due”.  TechRadar sums up: “When the technology underpinning these services goes wrong, the impact on consumers and businesses alike can be catastrophic”.

 

 

 

 

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COVID-19 bulletin 30: post lockdown, government has the resources to invest and reflate the economy

Professor Sikka advocates investment to rebuild the economy of Britain, which entered the coronavirus crisis with poor social infrastructure and deep inequalities. Points made in two of his recent articles.

The crisis showed that the low-paid workers such as nurses, midwives, care workers, supermarket staff, teachers and bus and delivery drivers were the lifeline of society. Detailed figures for the cuts to the police and NHS are given in his May article

Treasury documents leaked to The Telegraph show a government blueprint for recovering £300bn of the costs associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

• It lists government plans to scrap the triple-lock on the state pension the main source of income for many, which is around 29% of average earnings, the lowest among industrialised nations. The proportion of retirees living in severe poverty in the UK is five times what it was in 1986. So there is no economic or moral case for hitting retirees.
• There is already talk of further wage freezes for public sector workers.
• Influential think tanks like the Institute for Fiscal Studieshave called for a cut to the minimum wage.
• The Social Market Foundation is urging the government to hit the state pension, already one of the lowest in the western world.

Sikka (right) describes the government’s post-coronavirus economic strategy as, “more austerity, hit the poor, cut essential services”. And continues:

We have the money to build a better society after this crisis: there is no shortage of resources

With record low interest rates, government can borrow to invest and reflate the economy – just as the economy was rebuilt after the Second World War – and the subsequent prosperity enabled governments to reduce the public debt.

He adds that the government can use its overdraft facility known as the “ways and means” facility at the Bank of England. The Treasury has used £400m so far and during the 2008 recession it used £19.8bn.

The Bank of England is using its £645bn quantitative easing programme, i.e. printing money, to support purchase of corporate bonds. The government could use the same process to bail out the poor by buying their debts.

Economist Martin Wolf agrees in the FT today: “It is equally vital to support the economy for as long as is needed to ensure a full recovery. Given the Bank of England’s welcome and sensible support, the government can afford to borrow on a huge scale and must be willing to do so”.   

Tax related measures advocated include raising additional tax revenues without increasing the basic rate of income tax or national insurance contributions. Investment in HMRC and curbing offshore tax avoidance could raise billions.

But corporations are already undermining our welfare

Sikka points out that the government has given billions of pounds to businesses in the form of business rates holidays, wage subsidies, cheap loans and guarantees; all without any obligations to safeguard jobs. This has freed corporations to reduce wages and cut or downgrade the jobs of workers; examples cited in detail in his June article relate to British Airways, Bam Construct, Ryanair,  Daily Mirror, Daily Express and P&O.

Cuts to public services will damage the private sector which is the main supplier 

Wage and pension cuts will severely erode people’s purchasing power; they will not be able to buy goods/services produced by businesses and the economy will stall.

But the Conservative government – with its large parliamentary majority – is not in a mood to listen. Shall we on the left be able to reposition people’s awareness and press the government to change its policies?

The new economy must work for everyone, not just shareholders and financial speculators. Parliament needs to make the right choices and build a sustainable economy by investing, creating resilient public services and boosting people’s purchasing power. 

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Sources:

https://leftfootforward.org/2020/06/elites-will-use-this-crisis-to-reshape-the-state-we-have-to-push-back/

https://leftfootforward.org/2020/05/prof-prem-sikka-we-must-rebuild-not-tax-and-cut/

 

Prem Sikka is Professor of Accounting at University of Sheffield and Emeritus Professor of Accounting at University of Essex. He is a Contributing Editor to LFF and tweets here.

 

 

 

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Conservative co-chair revelation: Jetset to spend even more time abroad under a Labour government

The Telegraph reports that MP James Cleverly, who is in charge of the Tory election campaign, says that he is aware of individuals, including entrepreneurs and other business figures, some Jewish, who plan to leave the country if Labour were to win the election.

Would that be noticed? Many – like the Telegraph’s owners – already spend much of their time away from Britain.

Surely they could survive relatively unscathed, despite paying taxes in full and ‘coming to an arrangement’ with the currently short-staffed inland revenue service, paying their workers a living wage and bearing the costs of any pollution emitted by their businesses?

Mr Cleveley shows compassion for those whom he says are planning to leave, but appears to lack sympathy for the less fortunate. The Independent reported that, according to Parliament’s register of interests, Cleverly was one of 72 Conservative MPs voting against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property. He opposed – and therefore delayed – legislation which would have required private landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation”.

https://libraenergy.co.uk/homes-fit-human-habitation/

When working with mayor Boris Johnson as Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, he was responsible for the closure of ten fire stations in London, after which an elderly man jumped from a burning building in Camden, following delays in the arrival of fire crews. The Fire Brigades Union had repeatedly warned that a tragic death of this kind would occur after severe cuts to funding of the fire service in London. 

Outnumbered

Under a government led by Jeremy Corbyn, as corporate tax evasion and avoidance on a large scale is addressed releasing funds for education, health and other important services, the 99% on lower incomes will welcome a living wage, a well-staffed fire and health service, homes fit for human habitation, appropriate care for the elderly and disabled and better employment opportunities as manufacturing and services are increasingly in-sourced. 

And these millions have one asset: their vote.

 

 

 

 

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Broken Britain 16: HMRC refuses to investigate money-laundering and tax fraud charges by largest Conservative donor

Three classes of British looting: which is the most culpable?

Professor Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting at University of Sheffield and Emeritus Professor of Accounting at University of Essex, draws attention to the case of the UK telecoms giant Lycamobile, the biggest donor to the Conservative Party, which has accepted £2.2m in donations since 2011.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has refused to assist the French authorities and raid Lycamobile’s UK premises in order to investigate suspected money laundering and tax fraud.

Economia, the publication for members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) which covers news and analysis on the essential issues in business, finance and accountancy, reports:

Following an initial denial (left, Financial Times), Economia confirmed that in an official response to the French government dated 30 March 2017,  a HMRC official noted that Lycamobile is “a large multinational company” with “vast assets at their disposal” and would be “extremely unlikely to agree to having their premises searched”, said the report.

The letter from HMRC to the French government added, “It is of note that they are the biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party led by Prime Minister Theresa May and donated 1.25m Euros to the Prince Charles Trust in 2012”.

This is an ongoing saga: in 2016 Economia noted: “The Tories have come under fire for continuing to accept donations of more than £870,000 from Lycamobile since December, while it was being investigated for tax fraud and money laundering”.

In 2016 In May it emerged that KPMG’s audit of Lycamobile was limited due to the complex nature of the company’s accounts. Later, KPMG resigned saying it was unable to obtain “all the information and explanations from the company that we consider necessary for the purpose of our audit”.

HMRC: “has become a state within a state”.

Prem Sikka (right) continues, “The House of Commons Treasury Committee is demanding answers to the Lycamobile episode – but HMRC is unlikely to prove amenable”.

In recent years, the Public Accounts Committee has conducted hearings into tax avoidance by giant global corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Starbucks, Shire and others. The hearings have not been followed by HMRC test cases.

The Public Accounts Committee has also held hearings into the role of the large accountancy firms in designing and marketing avoidance schemes and exposed their predatory culture. In a telling rebuke to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Committee chair said: “You are offering schemes to your clients—knowingly marketing these schemes—where you have judged there is a 75% risk of it then being deemed unlawful. That is a shocking finding for me to be told by one of your tax officials.”

Despite the above and numerous court judgments declaring the tax avoidance schemes marketed by accountancy firms to be unlawful, not a single firm has been investigated, fined or prosecuted.

There are real concerns that HMRC is too sympathetic to large companies and wealthy elites.

A major reason for that is the ‘revolving door’, the colonisation of HMRC by big business and its discourses: its current board members include non-executive directors connected with British Airways, Mondi, Anglo American, Aviva, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Rolls Royce.

After a stint at HMRC many of the non-execs return to big business. Corporate sympathies are therefore not counterbalanced by the presence of ordinary taxpayers or individuals from SMEs and civil society.

Sikka ends: “In such an environment, it is all too easy to turn a Nelsonian eye on corporate abuses and shower concessions on companies and wealthy individuals”. Read more here.

 

Why should we care?

Because tax revenue pays for the services used by all except the richest, the education health, transport and social services, increasingly impoverished by funding cuts imposed by the last two British governments.

The Shadow Chancellor has twice called for more rigorous examination and tightening of processes at HMRC to ensure that corporations and wealthy individuals are free from political corruption and pay fair rates of taxes.

Will the next government elected be for the many, not the few?

 

 

 

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Sharma and the Agri-Brigade: bureaucrats and white collar workers lacking all essential survival skills, undermine food producers

In England, many organisations ostensibly concerned with the prosperity of farmers hold endless conferences. Analyst Devinder Sharma notes that, in India, agricultural universities, research institutes, public sector units, and other organisations also frequently gather to talk about ways to improve farmers’ income.

He comments sardonically that while the number of seminars/conferences on doubling the farmers’ income have doubled in the past few months, farmers increasingly sink into a cycle of deprivation.

As he points out, in both countries those who talk of allowing markets to provide higher farm incomes are the ones who get assured salary packets every month – we add that in England some are even paid from a levy on farmers.

The British farming press is now pointing out that large numbers of the UK’s 86,000+ family farmers are facing a threat from the government’s new universal credit (UC). If administered as currently designed, it will have a devastating impact on many of the UK’s most economically vulnerable family farms.

Universal credit will be ‘rolled out’ regionally by the DWP to cover the whole of UK by 2022 – calculated on monthly rather than annual income and it will assume that farmers have a “minimum income floor” which assumes that all applicants earn a wage equivalent to the national minimum wage of about £230 a week which is not the case. Private Eye (The Agri Brigade column) comments:

“None of this is remotely appropriate for farmers, and it shows the folly of trying to introduce a single universal form of income support for all.

On many family farms, where one or two people may work up to 250 acres, there is often no income for up to 10 or even 1 I months in a typical trading year. The sale of a crop of lambs, cattle or grain (or receipt of an EU subsidy) means revenue is raised in just one or two months of the year so the DWP’s assumption of a “basic income floor” each month doesn’t apply. There are also fears that receipts by claimants that rake their income above the basic floor in some months will disrupt entitlement to UC in subsequent months. (And farming losses in some months cannot be offset against a profit in others)”

Shades of the I, Daniel Blake experience:

When the UC administered by the DWP comes into force, skilled hard-working farmers will have to visit unfamiliar Job Centres to register for the benefit. ln addition. They will have to undergo face-to-face interviews over their eligibility for UC and be allocated a work coach to advise them on how to improve their access to better paid employment. Given the difficulties it seems certain many family farms currently claiming tax credits (administered by HMRC) will not apply for universal credit despite their poverty.

An unworkable system

Farming UK reports that a spokesman for the Ulster Farmers Union said: “UC makes it impossible to use prospective incomes or losses, which is often what farmers depend on. The fact that farming is seasonal where there will be long periods of time when a farmer will make a loss in expectation of more profitable times at some other stage during the year. In addition, having to do monthly real-time accounts is an extra burden upon farmers, in an already hard-pressed industry, and to hire someone to prepare these accounts would be an extra expense”.

As the title has it: “bureaucrats and white collar workers lacking all essential survival skills, undermine food producers”.

 

 

 

Austerity 2: Corbyn “spending cuts would not be needed if big companies paid their tax”

Parliament’s own website heads the summary of the Committee of Public Accounts report on Revenue and Customs: “HMRC still failing UK taxpayers”.

Its lamentable performance in simple tasks such as answering the telephone is on record and its failure to collect a reasonable amount of offshore tax evaded was published in November. It spoke of 11,000 job cuts since 2010 & 40,000 since 2004. Read the summary by the chair, MP Meg Hillier, here: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news-parliament-2015/hmrc-performance-report-published-15-16/

“HMRC must do more to ensure all due tax is paid. The public purse is missing out and taxpayers expect and deserve better.

“We are deeply disappointed at the low number of prosecutions by HMRC for tax evasion. We believe it is important for HMRC to send a clear message to those who seek to evade tax that the penalties will be severe and public. It’s also important that the majority who play by the rules, paying their tax on time and in full, see that those who don’t will face the consequences.

“Tax avoidance also remains a serious concern. Too many avoidance schemes run rings around the taxman, operating legally but gaining advantages never intended by Parliament. If tax law is to be improved then HMRC must as a priority provide Parliament with comprehensive details of avoidance. HMRC must also rapidly improve its customer service, previously described by the PAC as abysmal and now even worse – to the extent it could be considered a genuine threat to tax collection.

“It beggars belief that, having made disappointing progress on tax evasion and avoidance, the taxman also seems incapable of running a satisfactory service for people trying to pay their fair share.”

• Report: HMRCs performance in 2014-15
• Report: HMRCs performance in 2014-15 (PDF)
• Inquiry: Report: HMRCs performance in 2014-15

The FT reports that people of Crickhowell agree: the town’s traders have submitted tax plans to HMRC, using offshore arrangements favoured by multinationals. They hope that their ‘tax rebellion’ will spread to other towns forcing the Government to tackle how Amazon, for example, paid £11.9million tax last year on £5.3billion of UK sales. Their rationale: High street coffee shop owner Steve said: ‘I have always paid every penny of tax I owe, and I don’t object to that. What I object to is paying my full tax when my big name competitors are doing the damnedest to dodge theirs.’

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Jeremy Corbyn: ”Cuts are not the way to prosperity . . .invest in the economy”

Yesterday, Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn MP, outlined his vision for a more productive and fairer economy for all at a policy seminar.

He addressed ‘the Conservative myth’ that wealth creation is solely due to the dynamic risk-taking of private equity funds, entrepreneurs or billionaires bringing their investment to UK shores.

If believed, it is logical to cut taxes for the rich and big business, not to bother to invest in the workforce, and be intensely relaxed about the running down of public services as is happening.

He affirmed: “Where there are tough choices, we will always protect public services and support for the most vulnerable”.

Corbyn’s alternative, laid out in The Economy in 2020 and accessed via the campaign website, is to build a rebalanced, prosperity-focused economy, based on growth and high quality jobs.

His leadership campaign has no big private donors. He wants Labour to become a democratic social movement again, dedicated to real change:

”Cuts are not the way to prosperity; Britain needs a publicly-led expansion and reconstruction of the economy, with a big rise in investment levels. We must ensure that our national housing, transport, digital and energy networks are among the best in the world.

“This requires the establishment of an National Investment Bank to promote infrastructure upgrades and support for innovation. Labour 2020 will make large reductions in the £93 billion of corporate tax relief and subsidies. These funds can be used to establish the National Investment Bank to head a multi-billion pound programme of infrastructure upgrades and support for high-tech and innovative industries”.

On taxation and tax justice, Jeremy argued: “Paying tax is not a burden. It is the subscription we pay to live in a civilised society. A collective payment we all make for the collective goods we all benefit from: schools, hospitals, libraries, street lights, pensions, the list is endless.

“Under these plans outlined today Labour 2020 will make the tax system more progressive, and follow a five-point plan to tackle tax avoidance and evasion:

• Stronger anti-avoidance rules brought into UK tax law.
• The aim of country-by-country reporting for multinational corporations.
• Reform of small business taxation to tackle avoidance and evasion.
• Enforce proper regulation of companies in the UK to ensure that they pay what they owe.
• A reversal of the cuts to staff in HMRC and at Companies House, taking on more staff at both, to   ensure that HMRC can collect the taxes the country so badly needs.

“The UK has shifted from taxing income and wealth to taxing consumption; and from taxing corporations to taxing individuals. We must ensure that those with the most, pay the most, not just in monetary terms but proportionally too.”

“What responsible government committed to closing the deficit would give a tax break to the richest 4% of households?”

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Tax cheats (£34-120bn) cost far more than benefits cheats (£1+ bn) – yet far fewer are prosecuted

Analysis of HMRC data shows that the political culture is sympathetic to tax avoiders

Summary of an article by Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex, which may be read in full here, adding official data confirming the thoughts of John Wight

Social security benefits come in many shapes, including the state pension, pension credits, income support, disability living allowance, employment and support allowance, jobseeker’s allowances and housing benefits.

• The total cost of all benefits for 2013-14 is about £164 billion.
• Around £1.2 billion or 0.7 per cent of the total is attributed to fraud. ‘
• Benefit fraud has continued to average between 0.6 per cent and 0.8 per cent for the period 2005/06 to 20013/14.

The government has set up a benefit fraud hotline and people are encouraged the blow the whistle on their neighbours and anyone else suspected of fraud. The sanctions:

• a £50 spot fine, without a court order, on individuals who mistakenly provide inaccurate information on their claims forms.
• Those suspected of fraud may be able to pay fines of between £350 and £2,000 in lieu for prosecution. From April 2015, the upper limit of the fine will be £5,000.
• Some may lose their benefits altogether for a fixed period.
• Private debt collection firms, bailiffs and forced house sales are used to collect penalties.
• Suspects can be charged under the Fraud Act 2006, which carries a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years.

The data shows that most of the criminal convictions are for frauds of less than £10,000. In 2011, two-thirds of fines imposed were for £200 or less. The largest fine imposed was £5,000. For the period 2008-2012, some 1,306 offenders received a prison sentence.

Benefit fraud is officially estimated to cost £1.2 billion (2013-2014) but HMRC estimates an annual tax gap – that is tax avoidance, tax evasion and monies of £34 billion (2012-13).

HMRC’s model is challenged by others who put the tax gap at around £120 billion.

Even in 2004, a former World Bank adviser was saying that the UK is losing over £100 billion a year to tax avoidance and evasion. HMRC’s 2013-14 report states that during the year 421 individuals were detained after arrest by HMRC officers, but none were charged.

Preliminary conclusions

The amounts attributed by the government to tax avoidance and evasion are much larger than the amounts attributed to benefit fraud. But the number of prosecutions and convictions for benefit fraud are much greater.

The political culture is more sympathetic to tax avoiders. HMRC was made aware of the HSBC tax frauds in 2008, but so far only one person has been charged. An excuse offered by HMRC is that it likes to make financial recoveries and thus does not go for prosecutions.

The revolving door swings and tax avoiders go scot-free

We add that in 2013, just as the Treasury was under pressure to review rules allowing Vodafone to avoid paying tax on its massive £84bn windfall from selling its stake in the American mobile phone giant Verizon, HMRC appointed Mark Dearnley, CIO at Vodafone, as its new Chief Digital and Information Officer.

Sikka points out that, on a number of occasions, the courts have declared some of the tax avoidance schemes to be unlawful. This has not been followed-up by any investigation or even recovery of the cost of fighting the schemes. Big accountancy firms are often the brains behind the schemes but no firm or partner has ever been fined even after the schemes have been declared unlawful.

• The same firms are given taxpayer-funded contracts, such as those relating to privatisation and Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
• Their partners advise HM Treasury and other government departments.
• The firms fund political parties and also provide jobs for former and potential ministers.

In April 2013, the government introduced rules to ban companies and individuals who took part in failed tax avoidance schemes from being awarded government contracts. So far, no such business has been barred.

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Britain’s government: “of the rich, by the rich, for the rich”

A reader sent this link to an article by John Wight – well worth reading in full – which crystallises the writer’s unease at the difference between HMRC’s treatment of poor tax or benefit defaulters and its leniency to the very rich.

As he writes: “The sheer scale of tax evasion on the part of the rich in the UK is staggering . . . in 2014 more than £80billion was lost to the Exchequer as a result of tax evasion in 2014 . . .

“At the other end of the social spectrum benefit fraud costs just over £1billion each year . . .”

Mr Wight refers to a two tier system of justice:

• Those found guilty of benefit fraud are maligned, shamed, and demonised.
• The rich found guilty of tax fraud are allowed to avoid the inconvenience of prosecution and court in return for an undisclosed pay off.

And adds that “more damning evidence of the extent to which the rich are ‘getting away with it’ is provided by the fact that despite the mammoth difference in cost to the UK taxpayer the resources that have been deployed to crack down on benefit fraud are exponentially more than tax evasion”.

His overview:

“We have in Britain a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, the consequences of which are tangible. With the advent of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, caused by the greed and recklessness of the banks, the government has effected the transference of wealth from the poor to the rich under the rubric of austerity, a process measured in food banks, payday loans, benefit sanctions, the bedroom tax, and zero hours contracts at one end of the social and economic spectrum, alongside an increase in the wealth of the country’s 1000 richest people over the same period”.

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