O/T - general election 2019

[KerrAvon]

Kerr - re Labour tax.

The truth is each company will take an individual opinion. There is no rule covering all. Its a balance of the tax increase over cost of relocation and shipping back into your domestic market. If you manufacture its a much bigger consideration. Obviously some companies are more fluid than others.

The far bigger consideration (and we've had this conversation before) is location (to your market, your historical roots and trained workforce).

We've seen it with non EU multi-nationals locating into the EU. If tax was the major driver they'd all be in Ireland.

I have two issues with Labour’s Corporate Tax policies, WanChai:

The first issue that I take is with the fundamental dishonesty of Labour’s position. In essence, they are running a ‘webuyanyvote.com’ campaign on the basis that ‘someone else’ is going to be paying. That simply isn’t true. Businesses employ people, provide goods and services to people and pay dividends to people either directly or into pension funds that will provide for people’s retirement. It follows that taking money from business involves taking money from people. No amount of dissembling or muttering about ‘neoliberals’ changes that fundamental fact.

The second issue that I have with Labour is that their plan will raise corporate taxes to the point where they are taking more in corporation tax than any other G7 country.

Higher corporate tax rates will costs jobs and tax revenues in the UK. This article touches upon the outflow of business at the end of the last Labour government and the inflow after reductions in the UK corporate tax burden:

https://taxfoundation.org/tax-reform...ax-inversions/

It’s probably written by ‘neoliberals’ and so doesn’t count, but the Guardian reported on the return of one UK company from Ireland (one of a number) in response to tax changes under the coalition:

https://www.theguardian.com/business...ised-return-uk

In answer to the Guardians question as to how many others would follow, at least one of the companies mentioned, Informa, returned to the UK in 2014:

https://informa.com/investors/shareh...ns/redomicile/

Finally, here is a useful source of advice for business owners:

https://smallbusiness.co.uk/move-uk-...eland-2542369/

Those changes took place in response to tax alone. How do you think companies are going to react to Labour’s 10% nationalisation plan?

It is of course correct that there are numerous drivers upon where a company chooses to employ people and have its tax base (and the those two aren’t the same thing). Amongst other reasons, the UK is attractive because we speak English, have a relatively well educated workforce, are a stable democracy and have the best corporate lawyers and commercial court system in the world.

They are all important factors, but to argue - as you seem to be doing - that they matter, but tax rates don’t is nonsensical. You either accept reality or you don’t – you can’t cherry-pick based upon the bits that suits your political allegiance.