Today's Financial Times has drilled an alarming number of holes in George Osborne's much-spun anti-tax evasion deal with the Swiss authorities last week.
Today’s Financial Times has drilled an alarming number of holes in George Osborne’s much-spun anti-tax evasion deal with the Swiss authorities last week. The Tories had gleefully tweeted how “nobody would have anticipated we would conclude an agreement with Switzerland to tackle tax evasion”, with loyal right wing commentators hailing the deal.
The criticism that “better than nothing is not good enough” will prove harder to spin, however.
In its leader, entitled “evading evasion”, the FT says (£):
“The UK government says the agreement will secure £6bn worth of absconded tax dues for the UK Treasury. That is better than nothing.
“But the real test is whether it is now sufficiently unattractive to violate UK tax law and whether this was the best possible deal. The answer is no.
“First, evaders will still pay less than if they had gone by the law. The withholding tax on investment returns is below the top rate in the UK – by a quantitatively marginal but symbolically significant difference. The one-off levy, too, is unnecessarily forgiving for principal that was not taxed when it was first earned.
“Second, this is an anti-evasion measure that seems all too easy to evade. The one-off tax will only be levied on accounts still open after May 2013. That is plenty of time for evaders and their Swiss bankers to discuss where it might make most sense to place the money next. Lichtenstein, which has a less taxing agreement with the UK, is being mentioned, but there is an abundance of other tax havens.
“Third, though the deal is not presented as an amnesty, it is hard to spot the difference. To let account holders who can keep not declaring their accounts settle their tax liabilities by paying less than regular UK residents smacks of permitting some people to pay their way out of obeying the law.”
It concludes (£):
“It is hard to imagine that no better deal could be had. Switzerland until recently got away with facilitating the breaking of other countries’ laws – mainly because those countries let it. That Bern is yielding shows that pressure works.
“Germany and the UK should not treat their bilateral deals as the last word – and they should support a tougher common European approach vis-à-vis Bern…”
The FT’s last point, about the lack of a global deal to tackle tax evasion, echoes Left Foot Forward’s criticisms of the deal last Thursday; as Daniel Elton wrote:
“Campaigners had hoped for a comprehensive tackling of tax avoidance to be on the agenda for the G20 meeting in November, when governments could have set up an information exchange system between themselves to track down avoiders. This unilateral action by the UK government, and such alleged action by Germany, essentially sells smaller countries without the same clout down the river.”
45 Responses to “FT takes apart Osborne’s Swiss tax deal”
Andrew Little
http://t.co/A7vm2gT Osbod's Swiss deal wont make slightest difference. Tax evaders will simply move money elsewhere.
Andrew Little
http://t.co/A7vm2gT Idiot Osbod's Swiss deal wont make slightest difference. Tax evaders will simply move money elsewhere.
Darren
We are reading a lot about the fact that the German-Swiss deal may not be approved by Germany’s Congress, but it is simply wishful thinking on the part of some. It is true that Merkel does not have a majority in the German Senate, but she has more than one way to “buy” a few votes if she comes up short. Remember that Germany continues to see vast fiscal transfers from West to East, which makes it very easy to trade favors across the aisles of the legislature. While nothing is certain except death, it is a safe bet that this treaty will be ratified, most likely on a day where everyone else is looking the other way and is busy putting out a fire across the EMU.
We also read a lot about an elusive EU agreement on the taxation of savings. People need to get their facts right: the problem about the agreement is only indirectly related to Switzerland. The deadlock is actually within the EU, where there is strong opposition to the lifting of banking secrecy. Luxembourg and Austria have always objected to it and consistently said they would veto any such legislation and from 2009 onwards, it became clear to many parties that the EU would not succeed in changing their position. Germany lost patience and In January 2010, soon after Schaueble took office, Europe’s German-speaking countries started to negotiate the matter outside of the EU framework. Essentially Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg told Germany that automatic exchange was never going to happen, and that they should work on an alternative model. There was an informal meeting of the gang of five (with Liechtenstein) in August 2010 in which Germany and Switzerland agreed to start negotiations around their bilateral agreement.
The EU found out or was told about it, understood that Germany was no longer going to push for automatic exchange and started to redraft the revised directive on the basis of a compromise that would not force Austria and Luxembourg to abandon banking secrecy and would instead make the withholding regime permanent, but retained the rest of the revisions. Italy got very upset and started to throw its toys. The whole thing descended into a European farce. This helped the UK government, which was not at all in the flow of what the German-speaking countries were cooking up, realize that the EUSD was not going anywhere fast. To his credit, Osborne was successful in convincing the Swiss of starting a parallel process to that with Germany when the Swiss really did not need to.
London IWW
#Capitalism: FT takes apart Osborne’s Swiss tax deal http://t.co/0O1ssIb | #TaxAvoidance #Corporatocracy
Leon Wolfson
Great, that doesn’t mean that he’s any less guilty of directly helping tax evasion and growing the tax gap with this “deal”.
Lower tax for the rich, social cleansing for the poor.