Evil Knievil: The French get it right just for once

The French stance on taxation of large overseas corporations operating in France is not new. Glaxo got challenged over its profits in California about forty years ago. There was a rumpus entailing intervention by the British embassy in Washington. But the law in practice remained unaltered.

However, the fact is that income tax rates for workers should remain the same whereas Trump wants the likes of Google etc to send all the profit back to the US free of local tax.

Were local tax paid in France, a tax credit would be granted in the US such that broadly speaking Google’s tax bill would be unaltered. There would be slight timing delays on collection, but they are not material to the arguments here considered.

Hammond’s treasury wouldd like to reduce corporation tax to 10% and is therefore not minded to match the French. However, these difficulties are all consistent with Hammond’s emergence as a chap of limited intelligence. It is not generally encouraging.

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Pantheon (LON:PANR)‘s chief cheer leader is in hospital right now and therefore PANR lacks the full support mechanism/enthusiasm. But one would have to reckon that this morning’s announcement is fairly bullish. Now 20p offer.