A government so quick to join the race to the bottom is no friend of tax reform
We have learned two things in recent days: that scandal-hit coffee chain Starbucks has "listened to customers" and will now voluntarily overpay corporation tax by £20m across two years; and that George Osborne has pledged in parliament to "lead the international effort to prevent artificial transfers of profits [by multinational firms] to tax havens".
Both commitments generated a few headlines helpful to those opposed to the nefarious tax management tactics routinely deployed by large companies. And while they might not have been enough to derail UK Uncut's protests on Saturday in 40 espresso bars around Britain, they will doubtless have tempered levels of outrage among a wider, mainstream audience.
But is this really a turning point? Rhetoric aside, there is still little indication that this government – let alone corporations active in the UK – has a genuine appetite for permanent tax reform.
Take the chancellor's autumn statement: no sooner had he paid lip service to the idea of co-ordinated international action to repair the credibility of corporation tax than he had moved on to announce yet another cut to the UK rate. With palpable relish, he bragged that UK corporation tax, which had been at 24%, was to drop to 21% by 2014. Other countries were "scrambling to keep up".
Having a markedly lower corporation tax rate than these countries, Osborne argued, was "an advert … that says: 'Come here, invest here, create jobs here.'"
This beggar-thy-neighbour taunt says more than anything else about Osborne's true attitude to tax on the international stage. The real message to French and German counterparts is not one of co-operation – in truth, Britain is a poacher, not a partner.
Underlining his intent, the chancellor reeled off the comparisons with tax rates abroad – "in America it is 40%, in France it is 33%, in Germany it is 29%". His words echo the approach taken in Ireland, where, despite the nation being in hock to the IMF, the corporation tax rate has remained at just 12.5%. Little wonder Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook all have their European HQs in the republic.
Another way of assessing Osborne's true appetite for reform is to consider what the impact of genuine change might be on the UK. Not every firm in the spotlight here is American: a great number of the most aggressive international tax acrobats are listed on the London Stock Exchange. They are substantially owned by British pension funds and insurers, who pay tax on dividends and reinvest profits in the UK. Remember that in 2006 Britain's GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3.4bn to America's Internal Revenue Service after 14 years of wrangling. It was the biggest settlement for shifting profits overseas to lower a tax bill ever seen.
To GSK and many British corporations – as with Google and Starbucks – gaming tax regimes can be a significant profit generator. It is not hard to imagine what advice such firms, and the big four accountancy groups, might be whispering in the chancellor's ear behind closed doors.
There are those on the right who privately cheer the crumbling of governments' ability to levy taxes on corporate profits despite the dire state of public finances. And these fringe views are only likely to gain more traction should nothing be done to rein in tax abuses.
Self-interest may keep Osborne from joining the vanguard in this important battle, but there are other, more powerful forces on the international stage whose commitment to the cause may be more enduring.
As the balance of global economic power shifts from west to east, it is fast-growing Brazil, India, China and others who are increasingly setting the tone for international agreements. They have been growing impatient with the pace of reform at the OECD. Emerging economies have been the true net losers from global tax abuses. It is they, if anyone, who will drive change.
HBOS shambles is all the evidence we need to break up the banks
Lord Stevenson admitted last week that "there are very few days" when he does not think about the collapse of HBOS, the bank he chaired until its rescue by Lloyds in September 2008. Odd, then, that the crossbench peer ennobled by Tony Blair had trouble recollecting so much of his time at the bank when he appeared before MPs and fellow peers last week.
Until his appearance before the banking standards committee, chaired by MP Andrew Tyrie, the story of HBOS had largely been untold. The collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland – resulting in Fred Goodwin being stripped of his knighthood – has dominated because the numbers were so much bigger, and because the bank has retained its own identity rather than been consumed by a rival.
But four years after the rescue of HBOS, it is extraordinary that it was only last week that Sir James Crosby – knighted for his services to financial services in 2006 just as he left the bank – was called to account. Tyrie and his committee extracted an apology, and an acknowledgement that the bank had doled out money in an incompetent manner.
Expect the word "incompetent" to appear again and again when the committee's report on HBOS is published next year. Before then, Tyrie and co will publish their views on the legislation needed to implement the recommendation of Sir John Vickers that high street and investment banking be ringfenced. Everything that was aired last week should give them the motivation to argue for the toughest possible interpretation of the Vickers recommendations in their report on 18 December.
The committee has been testing the idea that the government should lay down on the statute books the right to break up banks entirely if they waver over ringfencing. Tyrie and his colleagues should force upon the government the option of a full bank breakup. It is what parliament owes a public still paying the price of the banking crisis, the seeds of which lie with men with peerages, knighthoods and fading memories.
Leahy's elementary – and disastrous – American mistake
Philip Clarke, Tesco's chief executive, was careful this week not to trample on Sir Terry Leahy's legacy when he pulled the plug on Fresh & Easy, his predecessor's pet project in the US. To many outsiders, however, Tesco's US adventure was misconceived at the outset. Leahy, it appears, simply misread the tastes of US consumers. For a retailer who prided himself on researching shoppers' preferences in elaborate detail, it was a stunning mistake.
The evidence lies in the numerous overhauls and U-turns Tesco had to perform in its doomed attempt to get Fresh & Easy up to speed. US shoppers revolted over basic elements of the original offer – fruit and veg in cling-film, self-service payment, stark stores and the absence of a bakery. All those problems had to be addressed. True, there was no point in Tesco entering a crowded west-coast market with a me-too offer. But it couldn't afford to stray too far from mainstream tastes.
To compound the problem, Leahy had bet big. Fresh & Easy's low-price format, he had determined, required size to produce acceptable returns. That required two distribution centres and its own factory. Tesco would have to be running at speed before it knew if the format was a hit.
The net result, we now know, was that £1.6bn was chalked up in invested capital and trading losses. Some of that sum may be recouped if the 200-store business can be sold, or placed into a joint venture. But, even for a company the size of Tesco, Fresh & Easy was still an almighty bet to lose.