I'd say your banks will re-locate anyway if it suits them. Holding the nation to ransom is like your playground bully. Let them go. Something less parasitical could take their place.
They are OUR banks. They lend us money for mortgages to buy homes and to businesses to grow the economy. BUT, the majority of the their business is overseas, not in the UK, so their choice of domiciled location for corporation tax is very much a valid one.
They aren't holding the country to ransom either - they are just saying that if tax is too high they will relocate in order to protect shareholders. This is actually a fiduciary duty of company directors not that this fact will get in the way of the usual left wing reality distortion field - we should also remember that the "let them go" argument simply results in everyone paying a lot more income tax to make up the shortfall and what normally happens is that those who cheerlead for this sort of thing are also the ones who very rarely if ever imagine they will personally have to pay it.
Well said @just5
Biggest issue for me is that the current bunch of knobbers are making life intolerable for the poor and the sick in order to reduce the state benefits bill by £3bn or so, yet they want to cut taxes. It all strikes me as a little bit obscene, as if they're hitting the poor and sick until they suddenly become entrepreneurs while cutting a teeny bit of tax for everyone earning over £150k.
I've waffled on about the amount of money lost to tax avoidance before, so I'll spare everyone the repetition. Sooner or later though, we're going to have to look at how wealth is distributed and acknowledge that "trickle down" Reaganomics/Thatcherism really doesn't deliver.
That said, I detested New Labour even more back in 2010 thanks to the antics of Honest Tony and his spin machine. I'd like to see him step on a rake.
