Taking Stock: Welsh town offshores to make tax avoidance point
A Powys town, Crickhowell, has registered a huge portion of its resident businesses offshore in order to highlight the problem of corporate tax avoidance
IN THE MINDS OF MOST, corporate tax avoidance is the preserve of big multinational businesses, blurring the lines and borders between where they make their sales and where they book them.
But no longer, after several independent enterprises including a salmon smokery, local coffee shop, book shop, optician and bakery in the Welsh town of Crickhowell have all moved offshore as they exploit loopholes in the tax code.
Advised by tax professionals and followed by a BBC crew as part of a programme slated for broadcast in the new year, family-run shops in the Powys town submitted their own DIY tax plan to HMRC, copying the offshore arrangements used by global brands including Google, Amazon and Starbucks which paid little or no corporation tax.
Not only that, Crickhowell’s residents want to share the structuring plans with other towns in order to illustrate the problem to the government in the starkest manner possible.
You can catch The Town that Went Offshore on BBC Two as part of its Britain’s Black Economy season early next year.
