Quote:Gordon Brown is hoping to secure an international agreement to help clamp down on tax avoiders, it emerged today.

The prime minister said at Commons question time that the outcome of a court case in the US could lead to more information sharing on the strategies being deployed by corporations to cut their tax bills.

Brown made his comments after he was challenged by Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, about the findings of a Guardian investigation into the scale of the tax gap, the amount of money being lost to the exchequer by companies using complex strategies to cut their tax liabilities.

Clegg said that British firms were using loopholes to avoid paying £14bn in corporation tax. Accusing Brown of having "one rule for fat cats and another rule for everyone else", Clegg asked why Brown was not "getting tough" on tax avoidance. "Instead of going on about British jobs for British workers, isn't it time to go on about British taxes for British companies?" Clegg asked.

Brown said that it was "possible to get an international agreement for the exchange of information in relation to tax cases" but that the government was first awaiting the outcome of US court proceedings relating to a Swiss tax avoidance case.

The prime minister went on: "That would be the way that we could move forward our proposals, that we could have both the exchange of information on tax and clamp down on these tax evaders."

But Clegg said that the prime minister was "living in denial" on the issue.

"He is the one who created a system which let big companies run circles around the Treasury, peers in the other place [the House of Lords] not pay their full taxes in this country, and let City bosses pay less in tax on their capital gains than cleaners do on their wages," Clegg said.

The billions lost by Brown could be used to fund "big, permanent tax cuts" to British families, he added.

Nathaniel Heidenheimer Wrote:The depressing thing was not the taxes. It was that Tom Daschle was chosen to begin with. As Glen Greenwald said of him, in DC it is known "that there are whores and there are whores and then there' Tom Daschle" His wife was the one that got the 15 Billion airline bailout to the airline -- on 9/12. He had made 5 million in lobbying fees, since leaving the Senate like 4 years ago.
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David Guyatt Wrote:Nice to see Gordo's high standards in action eh.

Quote:I would never do anything to harm the country or anything improper. I think most people who have dealt with me think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am

Quote:New Labour is intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:Nice to see Gordo's high standards in action eh.

The old adage that one should judge a politician not by his words, but by his actions, has never been truer.

That said, when Brown banged on year after year about having miraculously altered the economic cycle to ensure there would be "no more Boom and Bust", he was writing his own political epitaph.

Just as Tony Blair wrote his ironic epitaph by declaring:

Quote:I would never do anything to harm the country or anything improper. I think most people who have dealt with me think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am

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Peter Lemkin Wrote:Leon Panetta: “I’ve expressed the opinion that I believe that waterboarding is torture and that it’s wrong. More importantly, the President has expressed the same opinion. Having said that, I also believe, as the President has indicated, that those individuals who operated pursuant to a legal opinion that indicated that that was proper and legal ought not to be prosecuted or investigated.”