Thursday 12 May 2011

Promises promises....

The nats made many promises to get elected. We'll see how many they keep this time, but among them is a reduced corporation tax to attract overseas investment.

Richard Murphy has an interesting post on his blog, Tax Research UK. It is primarily about the Irish desire to keep low corporaton tax (and the resultant tax-haven status), and the EU's competing requirement that the Irish ditch low tax as part of the deal for a financial bail-out.

As if the Irish financial fiasco, and the collapse of the so-called "Arc of Prosperity", wasn't enough evidence that beggaring your neighbour is a limited strategy, the SNP is still planning (or so they say) to follow the low tax/tax-haven route. So the blog has some relevance, and a warning, for Scotland.

It's not the panacea it seems and the EU won't stand for it..... and it doesn't work anyway.