Some thoughts on the @fairtaxmark which recently certified AMT coffee
https://fairtaxmark.net/amt-coffee-fair-tax/ … (1/10)
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Fairtaxmark works by judging a company’s public reports against a scorecard of criteria https://fairtaxmark.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MNC-Criteria-Notes.pdf … The scorecard is not published (I don’t know why- it really should be) but you can test the criteria with AMT’s reports yourself.pic.twitter.com/AiEURi88OR
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It looks like a lot of points are for the normal disclosures of a UK Ltd company. Then there are points for country by country reporting. AMT breaks its accounts up into UK and ‘rest of Europe’. But you have to cross reference with the website to work out this means Ireland!
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The substantive criteria on are quite limited. It t seems like most UK (or UK+ Ireland companies) could get the FTM on basic reporting. Harder for UK multinationals and impossible (no criteria set) for non UK MNCs.pic.twitter.com/9RVI0JENEr
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FTM criteria don’t cover an issue which shows up in AMT’s accounts. The Directors have an interest free loan of around 1 million from the company.
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Is this OK? FTM founder and technical committee member Richard Murphy said “It's just about impossible to think this is motivated by anything but tax avoidance“ about a similar case a couple of years ago https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/27/peter-mandelson-400000-pound-tax-free-loan …pic.twitter.com/KH9ljsPATB
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The FTM criteria don’t really help us with clarifying the grey area between totally vanilla unobjectionable tax planning and something that could get you in the newspapers repeating the
#taxmantra . 10/10Show this thread -
[My view is that it is useful to clarify expectations on corporate responsibility/ reporting on tax, w potential for standardising -- but the certification model (like product certification fairtrade ) was not the road to go down, because that debate hasn’t been had]
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This is really interesting. Is it really just the same as UK legislation? If so, why does it exist? What's the win? Just to privilege the ones that can comply, domestic companies?
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Not quite the same (and predates UK legislation) - eg. FTM asks for published tax policy. UK regs only require this for really big cos, so for small biz that's beyond compliance. But UK gov tax strategy requirement tougher.
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