My thoughts exactly. This defeatist, hands-in-the-air attitude of "Oh no, we can't start pressing companies to pay their fair share in case they take their ball and go elsewhere" is quite abhorrent.
There is nothing defeatist, it is a reality. Raising taxes is a deterrent to doing business which means that raising taxes by 20% means you will not get 20% extra revenue and you will put some companies that were marginal before you raised taxes out of business permanently.
Here is an example, shamelessly ripped off from Tim Harford. Let's say I own a coffee shop and I calculate my costs per latte are £1.98 so I determine that the minimum price I'll sell a latte for is £2.00. You come in and you want to buy a latte. The maximum you are prepared to pay for it is £2.30. I will obviously sell you a coffee and the exact price you pay will be between £2 and £2.30 depending on how many other coffee shops are in the vicinity.
The government says "right we want some of that coffee action so we are going to put a 20% tax on each cup of coffee". Now the minimum I can sell a cup of coffee for is £2.40 which is more than you are prepared to pay. So you don't buy a coffee, I don't sell one and most importantly, the government doesn't get its 20% either. In fact they also lose out on the VAT, corporation tax and potentially income tax if I have to lay staff off.
I kind of agree but that doesn't accurately describe big corps like Google. I work for a company that spends £2.5m a year with Google, we pay Google Dublin (none of the adverts run in Ireland), so Ireland collects the corp tax, but the profit is generated in the UK.
As I understand it Apple will sell you a phone that costs £500 but £100 to make, Apple Luxembourg sell the phone to Apple UK for £450.
There are many like Ado that peddle easy answers it will interesting to see how Corbyn reacts, who had this idealism for years, hits reality. I'm already seeing some spin from Corbyn already, as one commentator put it, this isn't new politics its old politics done badly.
