Robert Peston casts his eye over George Monbiot’s tax plans

Max Teuerman took to this blog last month to criticise George Monbiot’s attack on the government over corporation tax plans. Now the BBC’s Robert Peston has blogged his own long-promised take on the story, saying:

The government seems to be trying to do precisely the opposite of what Mr Monbiot accuses it of doing: it is trying to stem the exodus of companies and their assets abroad.

As Peston explains,

George Monbiot warns that if dividends from overseas branches of multinationals become exempt from tax, that will create an incentive for multinationals to relocate more of their operations to these overseas branches situated in low-tax countries, such as Switzerland, Ireland or Singapore.

But that is to ignore the enormous current incentive for multinationals right now to relocate every single bit of their operations to low-tax countries, irrespective of what happens to the taxation of dividends from branches.

You can read Robert Peston’s piece in full here.