TOP STORIES

Friday 31 July 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015 Posted by Hari 1 comment Labels: , , , , ,
Posted by Hari on Friday, July 31, 2015 with 1 comment | Labels: , , , , ,

KJ, Fee and Chris learn not to be surprised...

SOURCE GUARDIAN: Businesses pocket £93bn in subsidies and tax breaks
Taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year – a transfer of more than £3,500 from each household in the UK. The total emerges from the first comprehensive account of what Britons give away to companies in grants, subsidies and tax breaks. Many of the figures, especially on direct payments, are hard to unearth, as they are scattered between various arms of the state. The government admits: “There is no definitive source of data about spending on subsidies to businesses in the UK.” Many of the companies receiving the largest public grants over the past few years previously paid little or zero corporation tax, the analysis shows. They include some of the best-known names in Britain, such as Amazon, Ford and Nissan. For example, in 2012, Amazon was attacked by MPs on parliament’s public accounts committee for avoiding UK tax. Yet in the same period, the online retailer was awarded £16.5m in grants by the administrations of Scotland and Wales to help build distribution centres. To link the Wales plant to the transport network, the Welsh assembly built the mile-long “Ffordd Amazon road” at an additional cost of £3m. The main subsidies include: £14.5bn in subsidies and grants (rail, defence, etc); £44bn in Corporate tax exemptions (mainly write-off expenses, and investment incentives); £15bn in hidden transport subsidies (rail, airline); £3.8bn to energy firms.

OUR RELATED STORIES:

Corporate scroungers: How about forcing employers to publish how much welfare top-ups their low paid staff depend on

How to bump up UK average earnings? Exclude the (mostly low paid) self-employed from the official calculation. But... they are, of course, included in our “impressive” employment stats!

UK wage inequality is the highest in the EU. Our gender pay gap is the second highest. So, it’s about employee negotiating power, not value-add

Graphs at a glance: Budget 2014 document shows we’re growing through borrowing. Again. That's why Britain needs a pay rise

Britain is already a low-pay economy with falling average wages

Is your Cost of Living crisis over?! Average wages are still back where they were 10 years ago

Who needs fat cat pay? The Germans don't. See the comparison with the UK

Workers driven from full to part time work is the only reason employment is holding up


1 comment:

  1. According to the Guardian article cited as the source the subsidy to Amazon was a spending decision taken by the devolved administrations of Scotland and Wales ie the SNP and Labour respectively

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Share This

Follow Us

  • Subscribe via Email

Search Us