Protests hit Barclays as it admits paying just £113m corporation tax
Share
Anti-tax avoidance campaigners protested outside 50 Barclays branches at the weekend after the bank admitted it paid just 1 per cent of 2009 profits in UK corporation tax.
Action group UK Uncut organised the protests after Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond revealed the bank paid £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 on a group profit of £11.6bn.
Several branches had to close due to the protests, which were staged in cities including London, Edinburgh and Birmingham.
Under the current corporation tax system, Barclays was able to offset losses resulting from the financial crisis against future tax bills.
A spokesman says: “Barclays has operations in 50 countries worldwide, all of which are subject to close governance and clear disclosure. The corporate tax affairs of an organisation with the global footprint of Barclays are complex and not red-ucible to simplistic comparisons. Any link between Barclays group profits and the amount of tax paid to the UK is inappropriate - there is no direct correlation between the two.”
Jamieson Financial Management principal Bruce Jamieson says: “The amount of corporation tax Barclays has paid is outrageous. The problem is because the amount is so minuscule, it is doing nothing to help alleviate the UK’s deficit problem. Barclays has gone about this in an appalling fashion and I can understand these protests.”
UK Uncut plans more protests against Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest this weekend.
If you enjoyed this article, sign up here to receive daily email updates from Money Marketing and Follow @_moneymarketing
Readers' comments (1)
Paul Routledge | 25 Feb 2011 8:37 am
I worked as a sterling deposit broker in the city for many years at Exco International and Euro Brokers and spent many a long lunch time and evening breaking bread and taking wine with many a good banker and take it from me, not many know what they are doing or indeed can read really read any market correctly hence the position we are in today.
I do not believe that the banks need to make fortunes at the expense of our small to medium sized businesses just so we could borrow our own already paid taxes at expensive rates, nor do I believe that by charging 4.5% over the base rate or libor on the domestic market gives them a better standing on the world stage for shareholders to invest in our long term economic growth, I think it just creates short term profits to bail them out and I don’t believe our economy is now or will benefit from that from that short term view.
The banks in this country along with the brown “nosed” Politian’s who courted them have been relied upon to be the knight in shining armour for too long and it is this which has given us a false economy when labour let them run the country to create tax revenue streams to support their socialist policies, these revenue streams were based wholly on the service industry and over inflated property prices and did nothing to promote our domestic manufacturing, our country has failed because we don’t produce anything except managers and bums (unlike the Chinese) and although they might taste nice man cannot live on eating managers or chewing on bums, we need to produce and gear up our GDP to compete in the world markets on price and quality and all the time our banks are ripping us off on what we need to pay them in interests to sustain growth, will always be a draw against that growth in this country.
However that’s not the end of it and they raise interest rates based on inflation being driven by worldwide fuel prices I suggest the last one to leave Britain turns of the lights – oops don’t worry about turning them off the Russians will have just switch them off for us in Moscow already ha-ha
Paul
landlord referencing services
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment