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Ritchie, academia and corporate taxes.

If anyone\’s at a loose end tonight would they fancy going along to the House of Commons? There\’s an interesting question that should be asked.

R. Murphy Esq will be speaking:

I am speaking at a meeting tonight in the House of Commons organised by the University and Colleges Union.

The aim is to abolish university fees and make big bad business pay for universities. The basis of the plan is here:

A report released today by UCU recommends raising the level of corporation tax in the UK to the G7 countries\’ average to raise enough money to abolish all university tuition fees.

It\’s going to be extraordinarily interesting to see Ritchie arguing for lower corporation tax, that\’s for sure.

For of course the level of corporation tax is not the same as the marginal rate of corporation tax. There\’s waaaay to much to be argued over allowances, depreciation, the tax base itself and so on. The best way of cutting through that Gordian knot is by measuring the corporation tax collected as a percentage of GDP. That\’s how we can measure the level taking account of all such things.

Here\’s the OECD report.

You will note that the UK collects more of GDP in corporate taxation than the OECD average, the EU 19 average and the EU 15 average.

In fact, if you do the simple average for the G 7 countries, it is 3.5% or thereabouts while the UK  is at 4%.

Thus if we are to get the level of corporate taxation to the G7 average then we should lighten it by 12.5%.

Hey, sounds good to me.

Added, of course, to the joy of seeing Ritchie argue for a reduction in tax levels there\’s a further point. The academics who have thought this up believe that such a lowering will increase revenue collected. Clearly they believe we\’re to the right of the maximum revenue point of the Laffer Curve then.

3 thoughts on “Ritchie, academia and corporate taxes.”

  1. it is a copy and paste of similar piece of garbage he put up on CiF back after Goldsmith went public about his tax status.

    at least nobody nobody is paying for this

  2. You can’t take the interpretation from the OECD graph that you are taking, Tim. Taxes of corporate income as a percentage of GDP, all that is showing is the corporate sector was generating high profits that year.

    For example, look at how the percentages rise during the commodity boom for Australia, Canada and Norway. Their corporates were generating high profits so the percentages rise. The UK figures rise because there was a boom in financial services and the property market. See also the UK spike in 1985.

    If the graph showed actual numbers for 2009, the UK number would drop substantially not because taxes were reduced but because corporates were less profitable.

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