“Ministers have come under fire after it emerged an Amazon boss has been appointed to the board of a key Government department.
The appointment has caused further anger over the Government’s record on collecting tax from multi-nationals after it was revealed last year that Amazon paid just £11.9 million to the UK taxman despite sales of £5.3 billion in 2014.
Doug Gurr, president of Amazon China, is expected to be announced as a new non-executive director of the department’s board next week, the latest in a growing number of business leaders appointed to the boards of government departments. …
… Other prominent business leaders on Whitehall department boards are Ian Davis, chairman of Rolls-Royce and Dalton Philips, the former boss of Morrisons and Sir Ian Cheshire, the newly-appointed chairman of Debenhams. …
… It emerged over the weekend that Facebook paid just £86million to all tax authorities outside the United States in 2014, despite declaring profits of more than £2.4billion – which suggests the firm paid a tax rate of just 4 per cent.
But its latest accounts filed to the US Treasury revealed it is reserving a $2.46billion (£1.7billion) fund for ‘uncertain tax positions’ – relating to tax investigations in a range of countries, including the US and Ireland, but not the UK, according to The Times.
The liability fund is more than double the £800million it set aside last year.
Thousands of ordinary British taxpayers, who do not have the luxury of setting aside millions of pounds to settle tax disputes, will start receiving fixed-penalty notices in the coming weeks.
The fees are expected to raise up to £90million for HMRC this year.
The penalties are issued to taxpayers who missed the deadline for submitting their self-assessment on January 31 and apply even if no tax is due.
If they are unpaid after three months, the penalty increase by £10 for every day they remain unpaid, up to a maximum of £900.”
East Devon Watch 