Vodafone’s Tax Credit of £17.4 billion

Collecting tax is about political will. The current British Government underlined its distaste for collecting tax from big business in 2012 when it altered the way multinationals’ tax is calculated. This is what George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, called being more ‘competitive’ and was the catalyst for Pfizer’s recent attempt to take over AstraZeneca. Osborne’s changes to the tax laws lower companies’ potential tax liability in two ways: (1.) The UK corporation tax rate is now considerably lower than many countries, including the US. (Pfizer calculated that by taking over AstraZeneca and moving their head office to the UK,…