At What Point Do We Admit Brexit Was About Tax Evasion?

Back in 2015, Britain rejected plans announced by Brussels to combat ‘industrial-scale tax avoidance by the world’s biggest multinationals’.

Britain had built a corporate tax haven for multinationals that included slashing corporation tax from 28 per cent to 20 per cent — new favourable tax regimes for multinationals with offshore financing subsidiaries, and tax breaks for patent-owning companies.

As a result, Britain saw a number of large corporations like Aon, Fiat Industrial, and Starbucks’ European operations set up headquarters in the UK with a small number of staff in order to take advantage of these tax laws …

The common tax regulations would have clamped down on offshoring and removed many of these elements of Britain’s competitive tax advantages over other EU member states. Then European Commissioner for Tax, Pierre Moscovici, stated that:

‘The current rules for corporate taxation no longer fit the modern context, as corporate tax planning has become more sophisticated and competitive forces between member states have increased, the tools for ensuring fair tax competition within the EU have reached their limits’.

Earlier in 2015, Conservative, UKIP and DUP MEPs also voted against EU plans to crack down on corporate tax dodging, by making…