Using global directories of the firms as indication of presence in a location and the number of employees by jurisdiction as an indication of scale, our research indicates the disproportionate activity of particular GPSFs firms, namely the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms, providing tax based services in secrecy jurisdictions. This suggests that they are major suppliers of offshore financial services.
You don’t say!
Oh dear.
“Using global directories of the firms as indication of presence in a location and the number of employees by jurisdiction as an indication of scale,”
At various times, this approach would lead a cunning investigator to believe that Chase Manhattan generated a huge chunk of revenue just outside Bournemouth.
I really hope he didn’t spend more than 5 minutes and 10 brain cells coming to that conclusion.
It’s interesting to note that nowhere does he explicitly state that the GPSF firms are involved in any sort of tax evasion. Fatso simply throws out the (meaningless) term “tax haven” and allows us to use our imagination as to what the Big Four are actually up to. So for all intents and purposes, his big research paper means nothing.
Quelle surprise!
Does he include Luxembourg in that? He needs to be careful about slagging off drunky Juncky’s home.
And Wiki has some information on the site where it’s published.
Not all good…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResearchGate
You just know that Murphy has one of these German bogs with a shelf to enable closer inspection of one’s own stools
I really hope he didn’t spend more than 5 minutes and 10 brain cells coming to that conclusion.
It seems most unlikely that the Spud has as many as 10 functioning brain cells.
But this isn’t new? Isn’t this just a rehash of something he’s done before? Maybe twice?
I’m sure the first time he got in a muddle over Scandinavian offices which are typically thinly spread with only a few staff in each?
Everything he does these days just seems a rehash of stuff he’s published before.
It’s easy enough to put those horrible GPSF firms out of the tax business.
Drop SDLT, CGT and CT to zero.
They wouldn’t like that at all. The accountants would have to do something else instead. There’s vacancies for maths teachers to be filled.
“It’s easy enough to put those horrible GPSF firms out of the tax business.
Drop SDLT, CGT and CT to zero.”
Yes, because dropping CGT to zero wouldn’t create any tax planning opportunities.
They wouldn’t like that at all. The accountants would have to do something else instead. There’s vacancies for maths teachers to be filled.
Some of my best friends (and family) are accountants, but they couldn’t teach maths to GCSE level – it’s not just difficult sums. The entirety of accountancy is a continuing effort to demonstrate that arithmetic is both commutative and associative.
What Andrew C said
To reduce tax planning opportunities set all taxes on income at the same non-zero rate (of course this would still leave some benefit from rolling-up income into a capital gain after several years but most people would not think the gain to be worth the risk and effort).
“Yes, because dropping CGT to zero wouldn’t create any tax planning opportunities.”
@AndrewC – in the territories that don’t have CGT, to what extent is there abuse of the system and planning taken to other jurisdictions.
Tough question, and you probably know much more than I about the possibilities, but are there any real examples apart from some small business people working their backsides off declaring that they are paying themselves minimum wage in order to add value to their business before they sell it on,