Protests against tax avoidance by big business and wealthy individuals have now been held in 23 British towns and cities, the pressure group UK Uncut claimed after a sit-in forced the temporary closure of Arcadia’s Topshop store in Oxford Circus.
‘Chaos erupted’ in the store on Saturday morning, the Daily Mail reported, with ‘campaigners and journalists forcibly removed by security guards’. Topshop reopened after three hours, but the main entrance remained closed because 40 demonstrators had sat in front of it. UK Uncut said the protestors then moved on to BHS, Vodafone, Boots, and Dorothy Perkins stores.
Announcing the launch of ‘Big Society Revenue and Customs’ (BSRC), the group – which was formed less than two months ago – said the protests were ‘expected to be just the first in a series of actions against Philip Green and other corporations by the BSRC across the Christmas period’.
‘David Cameron wants ordinary people in their spare time to carry out vital state run services that have been cut, so this is exactly what we're doing. If HMRC won't chase down tax avoiders, then we will,’ said 26-year old Daniel Garvin.
Alex Thomson, reporting for Channel 4 News, observed that the protestors accepted that Sir Philip Green's tax arrangements – his wife effectively owns the Arcadia group and lives in the tax haven of Monaco – are ‘legal and right in law’ even though they have enabled the family to avoid ‘several hundred million pounds’ in income tax.
‘Protesters say this is legal and right in law – but wrong in every other conceivable way and the Government must start changing such laws and clamping down generally on places like the British Virgin and Cayman Islands tax havens,’ Thomson wrote on the Channel 4 website.
‘Every now and then the coalition makes little peeping noises about doing such things, barely audible and as yet, barely credible. To date nothing dramatic has been done and what Sir Philip did once with the wife, he could do again,’ he added.
Thomson said the protestors were able to shut down the store ‘remarkably easily’, the police ‘effectively kettling Topshop's burly security people in, and keeping protesters and shoppers out’.
Richard Baron, Head of Taxation at the Institute of Directors, suggested that the protestors should call on the Treasury to get the rate of corporation tax down in order to attract investment. ‘We’ll all win from that, and by all means look at ways to change the law to plug loopholes,’ he told Channel 4 News.
Duncan Bannatyne, the multi-millionaire co-start of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den programme, tweeted on Saturday: ‘Protest against tax avoidance laws started today and I support it. We need to rebel against tax dodgers and the non-dom laws as Government won't.’
Arcadia declined to comment on the protests when contacted by Tax Journal today. Responding in August to critics of his appointment as head of a review of Government spending, Green told the BBC: ‘My wife's not a tax exile – my family do not live in the United Kingdom, it's somewhat different. We do pay all our tax in Britain. I think we have paid over the last five years some £300-400 million in taxes on profits that have been made on our company. I'm a UK taxpayer, I work here every week, we employ 45,000 people in the UK and we have got a £500 million payroll.’
Protests against tax avoidance by big business and wealthy individuals have now been held in 23 British towns and cities, the pressure group UK Uncut claimed after a sit-in forced the temporary closure of Arcadia’s Topshop store in Oxford Circus.
‘Chaos erupted’ in the store on Saturday morning, the Daily Mail reported, with ‘campaigners and journalists forcibly removed by security guards’. Topshop reopened after three hours, but the main entrance remained closed because 40 demonstrators had sat in front of it. UK Uncut said the protestors then moved on to BHS, Vodafone, Boots, and Dorothy Perkins stores.
Announcing the launch of ‘Big Society Revenue and Customs’ (BSRC), the group – which was formed less than two months ago – said the protests were ‘expected to be just the first in a series of actions against Philip Green and other corporations by the BSRC across the Christmas period’.
‘David Cameron wants ordinary people in their spare time to carry out vital state run services that have been cut, so this is exactly what we're doing. If HMRC won't chase down tax avoiders, then we will,’ said 26-year old Daniel Garvin.
Alex Thomson, reporting for Channel 4 News, observed that the protestors accepted that Sir Philip Green's tax arrangements – his wife effectively owns the Arcadia group and lives in the tax haven of Monaco – are ‘legal and right in law’ even though they have enabled the family to avoid ‘several hundred million pounds’ in income tax.
‘Protesters say this is legal and right in law – but wrong in every other conceivable way and the Government must start changing such laws and clamping down generally on places like the British Virgin and Cayman Islands tax havens,’ Thomson wrote on the Channel 4 website.
‘Every now and then the coalition makes little peeping noises about doing such things, barely audible and as yet, barely credible. To date nothing dramatic has been done and what Sir Philip did once with the wife, he could do again,’ he added.
Thomson said the protestors were able to shut down the store ‘remarkably easily’, the police ‘effectively kettling Topshop's burly security people in, and keeping protesters and shoppers out’.
Richard Baron, Head of Taxation at the Institute of Directors, suggested that the protestors should call on the Treasury to get the rate of corporation tax down in order to attract investment. ‘We’ll all win from that, and by all means look at ways to change the law to plug loopholes,’ he told Channel 4 News.
Duncan Bannatyne, the multi-millionaire co-start of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den programme, tweeted on Saturday: ‘Protest against tax avoidance laws started today and I support it. We need to rebel against tax dodgers and the non-dom laws as Government won't.’
Arcadia declined to comment on the protests when contacted by Tax Journal today. Responding in August to critics of his appointment as head of a review of Government spending, Green told the BBC: ‘My wife's not a tax exile – my family do not live in the United Kingdom, it's somewhat different. We do pay all our tax in Britain. I think we have paid over the last five years some £300-400 million in taxes on profits that have been made on our company. I'm a UK taxpayer, I work here every week, we employ 45,000 people in the UK and we have got a £500 million payroll.’
