International Firms Warned Against UK By Tax Advisers

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

31 December 2004

According to reports in the UK media this week, leading tax advisers and accountancy firms, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG are advising their international clients to avoid establishing operations in the United Kingdom, as a result of tax uncertainty created by government crackdowns and EU interference.

Reporting on the threat to the UK's competitiveness on Wednesday, the Edinburgh Evening News quoted PwC's UK head of tax, Richard Collier-Keywood as announcing that:

"When we advise US companies, we advise very few to base their headquarters here."

Loughlin Hickey, head of UK tax at KPMG, reportedly suggested meanwhile that several other EU member states, such as Spain and Denmark, may end up pipping the UK to the post of Europe's leading inward investor.

However, according to the report, the government's UK Trade and Investment Agency dismissed the accounting firms' comments, arguing that the UK is still "a relatively lightly taxed economy compared with the EU average".

A comprehensive report in our Intelligence Report series looking at offshore and onshore corporate structures and their tax implications is available in the Lowtax Library at http://www.lowtaxlibrary.com/asp/subs_reports.asp and a description of the report can be seen at http://www.lowtaxlibrary.com/asp/description_report7.asp

 

 






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