I received a lot of feedback to my ‘Doing Good is Good for Business’ post yesterday. Although all of it was fully supportive of the stance taken, I had a really interesting personal email from a partner at one of our Big Four clients making the point that “we repay our unquestionable debt to the UK society through our personal actions first and foremost, with corporate actions being secondary”. He supplied the latest Source of HMG Funds for 2012/13 which shows that Corporate Taxes were just 8% of HMG funds compared with 48% from Income Tax and NI.
“If there is more public disclosure to be made I believe (and this is a personal view not one espoused by my firm) we are better served by first looking to those at the top of organisations and having them declare what proportion of remuneration goes to HMG in taxation. External parties, including shareholders and customers, can then add that measure of a tax “tone at the top” to their assessment of the business, irrespective of what vagaries of the international tax system those businesses can or cannot take advantage of”.
It is a good point well made. Perhaps all the current emphasis on Corporation Tax is misplaced. Perhaps it is actually more important to look at the personal taxes paid in the UK by the likes of Google or Starbucks managers and employees?