Not if you are a banker.Barclays Bank made £11.6 billion pounds in 2009 but paid a mere £113 million pounds in corporation tax.
That is less than 1%!
Even the Daily Mail is outraged as you can read here.
And after the resounding failure that was Project Merlin, 'The Boy' George Osborne has again failed to live up to his tough rhetoric on the banks. The Chancellor has dropped plans to prevent banks from offsetting their losses from the financial crisis against tax. As Barclays recently admitted, this practice meant it paid just £113m in corporation tax on profits of £11.6bn in 2009. In a report last year for the TUC, tax expert Richard Murphy warned that the banks will avoid paying £19bn of tax on future profits by offsetting their losses -- the equivalent of more than £1,100 for every family in the UK.
It is standard practice for businesses to offset their losses against tax but in the case of the banks, who were the beneficiaries of a public bailout (or, in the case of Barclays, liquidity guarantees), there is an obvious moral objection. Osborne's capitulation means that the banks will receive an effective double subsidy from the taxpayer. Read it here.
All in this together? Don't make us laugh.
