Wealth Tax in Scotland: How it can be done

Richard Leonard's proposed Wealth Tax has attracted some comment on its legality. Here is a guest post from Thompsons Partner Patrick McGuire, setting out why he believes the tax is sound in policy, principle, politics and law.

Thompsons have had some brilliant trainees over the years; some of the best (I was one myself at one point in the dim and distant past).  But even the best trainees need, well, trained; and I think the most important lesson for a new lawyer is to read the case law and think for yourself.

We all fall into the same trap at first.  We think that longer is better.  We think the answer is found in text books.  We fear offering our own opinion.  This approach can result in articulate, wide ranging pieces of work with lots of quotes.  All too often however the absolutely crucial point is barely analysed at all.  

I read a blog recently on Richard Leonard’s Wealth Tax proposal that seemed to follow that approach.  It was very lengthy.  It had lots of headings.  It had a huge number of quotes from the various Scotland Acts.  It was on the face of it impressive and perhaps even convincing when it delivered the damning verdict that the Scottish Parliament could not introduce a Wealth Tax.  But when it came the key point of the key legal principle the analysis was all a bit flat and dare I say superficial.  

The blog correctly identified that an Order in Council would be required under section 80B of the Scotland Act 1998 as amended.  But the author of the piece couldn’t help trying to over egg how arduous a process this would be.  Speed in fact the defining characteristic of secondary legislation such as Orders in Council.  If there is political will, there will (good that) be no problem.

The only issue is whether a Wealth Tax would breach Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights [A1P1].  It took the author of the blog 22 paragraphs to get to that absolutely fundamental point before summarily dismissing the Wealth Tax on the basis that taxing a minuscule [my words not his] 1% of the most wealthy’s wealth would breach their right to “peaceful enjoyment of [their] possessions”.  

Case closed then?  

I think not.  I’d suggest it’s a bit more complex than that.  

What constitutes a breach of A1P1 has been the subject of several decisions of our highest court.  It is those cases and the written judgements themselves to where we must turn for an answer.  I have been involved, to a greater and lesser extent, in two of the most relevant court decisions; both judgements of the UK Supreme Court.  The cases are Axa and others  v Lord Advocate [2011]; and Counsel General for Wales [2015].  Both cases related to legislation aimed at assisting victims of asbestos related disease.  

The Supreme Court considered the Convention and all of the previous cases and set out a four point test that must applied to assessing whether a piece of legislation breached A1P1.  This is how Lord Mance in the Wales case described the test:

“(i) whether there is a legitimate aim which could justify a restriction of the relevant protected right,

(ii) whether the measure adopted is rationally connected to that aim,

(iii) whether the aim could have been achieved by a less intrusive measure and

(iv) whether, on a fair balance, the benefits of achieving the aim by the measure outweigh the disbenefits resulting from the restriction of the relevant protected right.”

It is a question of balance - what is the benefit to society weighted against the cost to the impact on any individual affected.  This is sometimes described as the ‘proportionality test’ which comes downs to the same thing - is any negative impact proportionate to the benefits; and can the benefit be achieved by any other means.  

Against that test set by the Supreme Court how does the wealth tax stack up?

(i) is there legitimate aim?  Yes - to inject a significant sum of money into the public purse in Scotland to redress the untold devastation of a decade of austerity on public services 

(ii) is the measure connected to the test - yes.

(iii) could an alternative less obtrusive method be used?  There is no alternative method to the one off fiscal ‘adrenaline shot’ the Wealth Tax will provide.  A significant one off financial injection is required to entirely reshape Scotland’s welfare system and public services.  The only way this can be achieved is through a one off Wealth Tax levied against those in our society with the most wealth.  In terms of “obtrusiveness” I take the view that a levy of only 1% can not be viewed as obtrusive.

(iv) benefits v disbenefits?  The benefits are enormous.  They will change our public services for a generation.  The disbenefit is a minuscule 1% of the wealth of the most wealthy.

Against a detailed analysis of the case law I therefore have little doubt that the Wealth Tax would be legal.  Morally, I have no doubt that it is the right thing to do.  And constitutionally, if the Scottish people called for an Order in Council under s80B that  Westminster refused we would be at a crisis that no one would want or tolerate. 

In summary, the Wealth Tax is sound in policy, principle, politics and law. 

Business rates review - tame but sensible reforms

The long awaited Barclay review of business rates hasn't exactly set the heather alight, but its recommendations are, in the main, pretty sensible.

The reviews main recommendations are set out in this helpful infographic.

The remit for the review was that the recommendations had to be revenue neutral. This means there are gainers and losers from the changes in both the structure and the reliefs.

The business lobby has long argued that business rates are too high in Scotland. However, they conveniently ignore the wider picture of business taxation. As this chart shows, businesses generally pay less taxation than their OECD counterparts.

The report recommends a number of administrative improvements such as three yearly revaluations. This is something UNISON has long argued for and the same should apply to the council tax on domestic properties. Better information, transparency and speeding up appeals and repayments are all reasonable. Plugging the many tax loopholes and a general anti-avoidance rule is a long overdue reform.

Big companies have obviously lobbied for consistency, but while the report supports standardisation, it doesn't recommend centralisation through another quango. This should remain a local system, reflecting local knowledge and that fact that most businesses in Scotland are local. The disappointment is that the review should have gone one stage further and returned the decision making on the level of business rates to councils.

The review also questions the effectiveness of the Small Business Bonus Scheme. The government has thrown huge sums of money at this scheme that could have gone into councils. A review in Northern Ireland has found that this relief could be better directed. Reform would also pay for the generous recommended changes in business support costing £45m.

There are winners and losers of reliefs. Town centres and day nurseries get new relief from business rates. It is perfectly reasonable to use tax reliefs to encourage particular policies and early years provision is a key element of tackling inequality. However, such support should come with at least some strings. The Scottish Living Wage would be a good start for the notoriously poor employment practices in many day nurseries.

The losers come in recommendations to restrict charitable relief. Private schools have come out with a predictable defence of their status. However, it’s not the purpose of charitable status to perpetuate the inequalities in our society that private schools sustain.

 

The other is sport and leisure facilities including council leisure trusts. Despite the claimed benefits of these organisations, the primary driver was tax dodging. If this loophole is plugged, as we warned it might, then councils should be taking these services back under direct control. However, this was one of the ways that councils coped with cuts to their budgets, therefore there would need to be compensatory budget uplift from the Scottish Government.

Supporters of Land Value Tax won't be pleased with the review, even if the door is partly ajar. They came to “An over-arching conclusion that we reached is that some form of property tax is still an appropriate way to fund the local services provided by councils”. While there may be a role for Land Value Tax as part of a basket of taxation, this is the right call.

Finally, the impact of the council tax freeze is highlighted in the revenue data. This chart shows how the council tax and business rates used to raise similar levels of revenue. Hopefully, ending the freeze will start to redress this imbalance once again.

While I might have wished for something a bit more radical, the review overall recommends some pretty sensible reforms. Not without some political challenges for the finance minister!

Talking about taxation

Something very strange is happening in political discourse in Scotland – everyone’s talking about tax.

The Scotland Bill hasn’t even been passed, but it is having the desired effect of moving the debate from spending, to a debate that includes how we will raise the necessary resources. This is a debate that goes to the heart of the sort of Scotland we want to live in.

Yesterday was a busy day for the taxation debate.

Fiscal Framework

I started the day at the IFS seminar on the recently agreed fiscal framework. The three David’s, Bell, Eiser and Phillips (is it only David’s who do numbers?), took us through the different models for adjusting the block grant the Scottish Government receives from the UK Government to reflect the new devolved tax and welfare powers.

 Adjusting it in the first year is straightforward; the tricky bit is indexing future years. The UK government favours the Comparable Model (CM) which recognises that Scottish revenues per capita are lower than rUK, but the Scottish Government objected because it does not account for Scotland’s slower population growth, which is likely to be half that of rUK. The Scottish Government therefore favours the Indexed Per Capita (IPC) approach which increases in line with comparable UK spending and the rate of population growth in Scotland. The compromise reached is that the Comparable Model will be used, adjusted to achieve the outcome delivered by the IPC approach. This holds until a review in 2021-22.

The IFS argument is that while this meets the Smith Commission’s ‘no detriment’ principle, it fails the ‘taxpayer fairness’ principle. While I accept the numbers, I beg to disagree on their interpretation. As a trade union official, I think I understand very clearly what ‘no detriment’ means in an agreement. On the other hand, ‘taxpayer fairness’ is less clear. I would also argue that this is fair because Scotland does not have all the economic levers of central government. A point developed in Jim Cuthbert’s Reid Foundation paper.

The fiscal framework does leave some risks for the Scottish Government. The agreement only insulates Scotland from UK wide shocks, not those that affect Scotland to a greater extent than rUK. In addition, the Scottish Government got fewer borrowing powers than it hoped, both for resource and capital borrowing - some way short of a prudential regime.

Scottish Government Income Tax plans

Next up, we had the First Minister announcing the SNP plans for using the new tax powers. She said that no taxpayer will face a tax increase. However, they will reject the UK government's plan to cut the tax for middle earners by only increasing the 40p threshold by the CPI inflation rate, taking it from £43,000 to £43,387. They will slightly increase the basic personal allowance from the planned £12,500 to £12,750, avoiding this reserved power by the mechanism of a zero rate.

The FM said: "That increase will prevent higher rate taxpayers from receiving a real terms cut in their tax bills, but nor will they see their bills increase”. In addition, the SNP is now not proposing to increase the additional rate, for those earning £150,000 or more, from its current 45p level.

While not passing on Osborne’s 40p threshold tax cut is welcome, the rest of the package does nothing to tackle austerity, respond to the huge social challenges facing Scotland or make tax more progressive. Changes in tax allowances benefit all taxpayers.

I have covered this ground before and my colleague at the STUC, Stephen Boyd, puts it well in a Rattle blog post this week, he said:

“No-one seems prepared to explicitly acknowledge three inescapable truths: if the social and economic objectives of Scotland’s two main ostensibly social democratic parties are to be achieved then total tax revenues will need to increase as a proportion of GDP; this increase will need to be delivered through devolved tax powers (higher transfers aren’t in the offing) and responsibility for funding this increase will have to be shared by more than just higher and additional rate taxpayers.”

As 83% of Scottish taxpayers pay the basic rate, we simply have to get real if we are to meet current needs, let alone address civil society’s shopping list. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have started to recognise that. Others must follow if they are serious about tackling inequality and providing decent public services.

Scottish Labour’s local taxation plan
And finally, Scottish Labour announced that it wanted to scrap the Council Tax and replace it with a tax based on property values. Councils would also get discretionary powers to introduce new taxes including a Tourist tax and a Land Value Tax on vacant, economically inactive land. They would also devolve the surplus from the Crown Estate to local government.

In essence, this is similar to the plan recommended by the Burt Commission and closely matches UNISON’s policy position. Property values are easily understood and assessed, and provide a more progressive and certain local tax. We are always happy when political parties adopt our policies!

Labour has capped the increase at £3000 making it less progressive at the very top. I understand the desire to avoid £5000+ increases, but in the longer term the cap should be phased out. Equally, restricting increases to 3% is fine as a transitional measure, but once the new system has bedded in that should go. Otherwise it means councils have less control over setting the rate. Local democracy is the only proper constraint on a local tax.

After years of inaction we have local taxation proposals coming from all directions. Scottish Labour’s plan is a proper reform of local taxation, even with a bit of political expediency mixed in.


Whatever you think of the various proposals, we are at least starting to have a debate about tax in Scotland. It isn’t always comfortable, but perhaps that’s the point.

Taxation and independence

The media today has put a real focus on taxation aspects of the constitutional debate and Corporation Tax in particular. The Scotsman has used a new book, Scotland’s Road to Socialism” as their starting point. The Herald focuses on the SCDI paper and there will be a discussion on Newsnight Scotland tonight.

From a pro-independence perspective, Jim and Margaret Cuthbert argue that Alex Salmond’s vision for Scotland falls, “far short of any meaningful concept of independence”. On taxation they argue that keeping the pound will bind Scotland in fiscal ties that will radically limit the country’s ability to pursue its own taxation policy. While I am somewhat more sceptical about the general case for independence than Jim and Margaret, I couldn’t agree more and made the same argument in Red Paper publications.

The Scotsman chooses taxation aspects of my chapter in the book to make a similar point. I argue that, “The evidence that tax cuts pay for themselves (Laffer curve) is simply not there. Any saving goes into profit, not investment and many of our companies are sitting on vast cash reserves already. There will certainly be a huge hit on public finances that is unsustainable. A better way is actually higher taxation to fund investment in people, plant, infrastructure and research.”

There isn’t even any great enthusiasm in the wider business community. The SCDI paper, based largely on a business survey, that I reviewed yesterday notes, “There is no great desire to participate in a race to the lowest tax environment”. That survey put much greater emphasis on infrastructure and skills that all require public investment – not tax cuts.

Andrew Goudie makes the point in his Scotsman article that even if the Laffer Curve delivers the outcomes its supporters claim, it is a medium term strategy at best. He asks, “What would be the short-term – and hopefully transitory – compensating changes in policy and expenditure? That is, what is the opportunity cost of the corporate tax reduction in terms of foregone alternative policy and alternative public expenditure?”

Gus O’Donnell, the ever cautious former civil servant, said that there may the odd “obstacle” in the way of a Sterling zone. Other academics, such as Sebastian Payne, a public law expert at Kent University, declare more forthrightly, “The proposal of a joint sterling zone is economically unattractive and politically unsellable within the UK”. Precisely because taxation would need to be harmonised and our respective economies might not always be at the same stage of the economic cycle. Something that Dr Angus Armstrong from NIESR has articulated clearly.

And on the subject of forthright, there is a biting piece from Brian Wilson in response to Jim McColl’s rather strange interview earlier this week. On tax Brian says, “The next obvious question is how far this race to the bottom would go. If Scotland set out to undercut corporation tax in what was left of the UK, then it seems likely that our (by then foreign) neighbours would respond. And then another cut? It is easy to see why this scenario appeals to Mr McColl – but who pays? Certainly not residents of Monaco. More likely the same people who are currently paying, throughout the UK, for the same kind of priority.”

Jim McColl might regard these views as ‘unenlightened’, but they go to the heart of the SNP strategy dilemma. Nicola Sturgeon is keen to tell us about the prospects of a socially just Scotland, while Alex Salmond is promoting Scotland the tax haven. Sorry, but you can’t have both.



'Scotland's Road to Socialism' is available from Scottish Left Review Press.
 

In praise of Anas Sarwar's speech - well sort of!

Scottish Labour’s Deputy Leader Anas Sarwar made a set piece speech earlier this week that has been attacked from the fringe left and the right. It is worth reading in full rather than relying on some of the commentary that doesn't do it justice.  

I am someone who is likely to consider his words with a critical eye. I didn’t support Anas as Deputy Leader largely because he was a Vice-Chair of Progress, although he has subsequently resigned that post. I am also not a great fan of professional politicians, although in fairness he did at least do a real world job. His strengths are presentational rather than ideological, so a policy speech focusing on political principles is interesting. 

So what did he say? The introduction covered some common Miliband themes of social justice and inequality, broken politics, attacking the banks, energy companies and tax dodging. While not new, these are themes even the right recognises are dangerous for them. Hence Cameron is at least talking tough on tax dodging and energy prices. 

His pitch for Scottish Labour’s principles of Community, Solidarity, Fairness, Equality
and Social Justice won’t find many opponents within the party, although many of us would add a few more. He wisely targeted the references to universal provision, learning lessons from the less well crafted Johann Lamont speech on the subject. As I commented at the time, the reaction from some quarters to that speech was hysterical as she no more condemned universal provision than the SNP have adopted it. The legal aid debacle has demonstrated that. However, while I understand the differentiation strategy over universalism, I still believe it does more damage than good. 

But for me the most interesting part of the speech was when he, at least partially, tackled the issue Johann ignored – taxation. While his focus was on geographical redistribution he also pointed to a gap in Nicola Sturgeon’s speech, which he argued had, “No progressive argument in favour of those with the broadest shoulders sharing the biggest burden. How can you talk about social justice without talking about wealth redistribution?” 

So overall it wasn’t the speech that I would have written and of course it doesn’t go far enough. But it was none the less a significant move in the right, or left, direction. For a former Vice-Chair of Progress to even talk about wealth redistribution is real progress with a small ‘p’. It is a recognition that faced with the most reactionary government for a generation; this is the territory we need to be on. Anas Sarwar may not be a conviction politician, but he appears to at least recognise that Scottish Labour needs more than managerialism to motivate members and capture the support of Scottish voters. 

I won’t spend much time commenting on the predictable reaction to the speech from the fringe, exemplified by Robin McAlpine’s rant at the Reid Foundation. The key is in the last line of his post, “Or stay where you are”. This reflects the fringe left view that if Labour moved to the murky middle they can capture the left vote in Scotland. That isn’t going to happen and in real world politics you have to build broad alliances to achieve change.

 

In that context, if I can adapt Mark Antony’s words - I come to broadly praise Anas’s speech, not to bury him.    

Local taxation

We had a very good session today at the STUC looking at the options for the reform of local taxation. I presented UNISON’s thinking along with Andy Wightman arguing for Land Value Tax and Stephen Curran on Glasgow City Council’s local taxation working group’s report. 

I started with first principles. What a fair system of taxation should look like with an emphasis on tackling all forms of wealth and using progressive taxation to reduce inequality. UNISON’s principles for local taxation include; local authorities raising and control revenue; business rates returned to local authority control; a property tax as the best for fit local government and grant support allocated with a minimum ring fencing. 

We have looked at all the options including a Local Income Tax (LIT), Land Value Tax and a fairer property tax. However, on this subject I almost always find myself drawn back to the Burt Review. This is without doubt the most thorough look at local taxation in Scotland in a generation. 

The problem with LIT is well documented as the many critical submissions to the Scottish Government’s efforts to introduce this tax show. An effective basket of taxation needs a property tax otherwise the tax burden falls disproportionately on workers. You can’t hide property or move it abroad as the richest do to avoid income tax. 

Land Value Tax is a property tax and therefore starts from the right place. However, while it taxes the owners of land there is nothing to stop the owners passing the cost onto tenants. The biggest difficulty is that two plots of land with very different properties end up with the same charge and few people will perceive this to be fair. Bills will be hard to understand as people roughly know the value of their property, but not the land value alone. We have poor data on which to base valuations and collection will be difficult from owners who can conceal their ownership through companies - breaking the link between local taxes and local democratic accountability.  

LVT undoubtedly does start to address a number of issues around land speculation, housing policy and would support land reform. There may well be a role for it at the national level, but as local tax it is far from ideal. 

Reforming the Council Tax by increasing the number of bands at the top and the bottom and increasing the multiplier between bands is a popular reform. However, on its own it still doesn’t make the tax progressive enough. It could work better if linked with regular compulsory revaluation and a reformed Council Tax Benefit. 

That leaves a Local Property Tax (LPT) as recommended by the Burt Review. It would be levied as a percentage of the capital value of the property (around 1%) thereby covering land and house value. It is more progressive than the Council Tax, avoiding the ‘cliff edge’ consequences of banding and is simple and understandable with all the benefits of a property tax. 

 

It has to be recognised that there are no easy solutions. As Derek Birrell’s study shows, there has been a political impasse across the UK in tackling this issue. The best options all involve political risk because of the significant number of losers. Both LVT and LPT would deliver more gainers than losers, but that doesn’t address the political risk factor, especially as the losers are the articulate middle classes. Even with transitional arrangements no politician has yet had the bottle to take the plunge.

Procurement and tax dodging

Today, I submitted UNISON Scotland's response to the Scottish Government's consultation on the proposed Procurement Reform Bill.

Procurement is not the most exciting issue I have to deal with, but it is one of the most important. We should view it as an opportunity to ensure that annual procurement spending of nearly £11 billion in Scotland is used to deliver important social, economic and environmental benefits, including improved protections for workers.

The consultation proposals are, to put it generously, very modest. 'Business friendly' appears to be the theme with the wider benefits marginalised.

So today we have focussed on just one of our more radical proposals. Scotland should ban companies involved in tax dodging from public contracts.


It is entirely wrong that companies seeking to avoid paying their fair share of tax should be awarded public contracts. We think this is an important opportunity to do what some European cities such as Helsinki and Paris are already doing, in acting against companies using tax havens. Our message to the Scottish Government is that they should adopt a tax justice approach, finding ways, with appropriate legal advice, to bar companies involved in tax dodging from being eligible to bid. As SNP and Labour MP's at Westminster have supported this approach, we are hoping for something of a cross party consensus on this issue.

Recently public outrage has focused on big-name companies like Google, Amazon and Starbucks paying miniscule amounts of tax. But it is much more widespread as the Tax Justice Network has highlighted and I have covered in past blog posts. Richard Murphy is the UK's leading expert on these issues and he welcomed our initiative on his blog today.

Many companies investing in PPP/PFI projects are registered in tax havens and as the Scottish Government has the biggest PPP/PFI programme in Europe, this sort of measure could help change tax dodging companies approach to paying tax.

So let's send a very clear message - if you want contracts funded by the taxpayer, you have to pay tax like the rest of us.

7 problems with Osborne's 'owner-employee' scheme

The latest stunt from George Osborne is a new kind of employment contract called an owner-employee. Having messed up the economy, why not dabble in another minister’s portfolio!

New, so called owner-employees will be required (optional for existing staff) to swap some of their employment rights for  between £2k and £50k of shares in the business they work for, any gains on which will be exempt from capital gains tax. The rights are unfair dismissal, redundancy, the right to request flexible working/time off for training and providing 16 weeks’ notice of a firm date of return from maternity leave, instead of the usual 8. Legislation will come later this year so that companies can use the new type of contract from April 2013. The Government will consult on some details of the contract later this month.

This Beecroft style proposal has all the hallmarks of a wheeze suggested to the Chancellor over one of those expensive fund raising dinners. It also has the attraction of diverting attention from the mess he is making of his own portfolio at the Tory Party conference. A few initial problems spring to mind.

·         These workers will ‘own’ nothing. A handful of shares does not give an employee any real ownership say in the running of the business. But they do take the financial risk of the real owners running down the business and making the shares worthless. We have seen this happen in other employee share ownership schemes.

·         The most likely time an employer will want to sack a worker is when the firm is doing badly. At that time the shares will probably be worthless. So no job, no redress and no cash.

·         Growing small firms actually don’t want to spread ownership because it could impact on the ability to sell the firm. That’s why they insert ‘bad leaver’ terms into the share ownership provisions. If the Treasury blocks this option, as their PR implies, the scheme becomes unattractive.

·         How will the small firm find the capital to do this and what effect will it have on their profit and loss account or share capital account? This could have a knock on effect on their profitability that won’t help borrowing. (hat tip to Richard Murphy)

·         You can already sense dodgy law firms suggesting ways this could be exploited to cowboy employers. For example, cut the pay of new starts by £2k and replace it with shares under this scheme and, for not a penny, you are exempt from unfair dismissal etc.

·         The problem with this and other attempts to weaken unfair dismissal is the unintended consequences. If straightforward unfair dismissal is not available workers and their advisors are more likely to look at the underlying causes of the dismissal. This brings much more complex and expensive legal action into play, including discrimination.

·         As tax law is involved there will inevitably be some complex procedural requirements. In fact the very red tape the Chancellor is so fond of complaining about. Many employers will simply say it isn’t worth the effort. Particularly as very few of them think employment rights are a problem anyway.

With a bit more time I am sure I could come up with many more. The Treasury risk register on this one would make interesting reading. Although I suspect this nonsense was cobbled together so quickly that officials will be scurrying around trying to give the appearance that it will work.

We're Not Broke

I was at the European film premiere of We’re Not Broke last night, part of the Take One Action film festival. I was also a member of the post film discussion panel.

The film follows the actions of USA Uncut members in their protest actions across the US. They modelled themselves on the UK Uncut model in highlighting tax dodging companies and the consequential cuts in public services. The film also explains how multi national corporations transfer funds across the globe, using tax havens to avoid US business taxes. Equally powerful was showing how corporations influence, well buy actually, the US legislature on tax issues.

There was also a clip of another panel member, Jolyon Rubenstein’s (BBC The Revolution will be Televised), film highlighting Philip Green’s tax dodging activities. As I pointed out, Green was hired by Cameron to advise on public service efficiency. You really couldn’t make this stuff up!

While the film focuses on the US, there were plenty of messages for us in Scotland and the UK. Not least because many of these tax havens have the Union Jack in their flags. In effect the Queen is the head of the world’s leading tax dodging corporation! Those in the SNP leadership who really think Ireland’s Corporation Tax rate is the way Scotland should go, should also watch the film. It’s done little for the desperate Irish economy and as the US experts pointed out, these corporations are not interested in halving Corporation Tax, they want zero tax. It’s just a race to the bottom.

Another message for us was the role of the big accountancy companies in oiling the wheels of corporate tax dodging. As an audience member pointed out, these are the very same companies brought in to advise on efficiency in Edinburgh council and others. Again you couldn’t make this up.

I set out our response to austerity economics through the Public Works and Better Way campaign messages. In the US the Tea Party and others focus on all tax is bad, government is evil etc. There is some of that here with the Tax Dodgers Alliance, but the particularly British take is, “We are all in this together”, invoking some sort of Dunkirk spirit. Of course ConDem spending cuts and tax increases hit the poorest hardest, while real wages are cut and the rich tax dodge their way to record levels of wealth.

There was a good debate about different methods of protest. Jolyon emphasised creativity as a tool and Christian Aid drew attention to their Tax Justice Bus that is in Edinburgh today. I highlighted the opportunity presented by the Procurement Bill that will be presented to the Scottish Parliament next year. If companies want to benefit from taxpayer pounds they should pay taxes as well. Including aggressive tax avoidance as a factor in tender evaluation would send a very clear message to corporate Britain that those of us who do pay our taxes have had enough. I also urged the good folk of Edinburgh to take a trip to Glasgow on Oct 20 and join the STUC march for ‘A Future that Works’.