Over 180 delegates returned to the Claremont’s Sanderson Suite for this year’s third instalment of KPMG’s UK and Manx Tax updates.
Entitled ‘FATCA, UK IGAs and More’, the series of morning presentations was provided by KPMG’s tax team and featured an international tax update from guest presenter Nicola Guffogg, Assessor of Income Tax for the Isle of Man Government.
Senior tax manager, Robert Rotherham opened proceedings with a presentation entitled ‘Corporate Tax in the Press…still’.
This provided a follow-up from a previous KPMG Tax Update in March this year during which Mr Rotherham explored the ramifications of the tax morality debate then at its height.
He explained Corporation tax remains headline news with many more large organisations now subjected to the same treatment as Amazon, Starbucks and Google.
Mr Rotherham noted that not only are the media’s published figures grossly distorted but that if excessive payments are indeed being made to foreign related parties then the issue is also necessarily one of enforcement rather than morality.
He suggested the demonization of corporate groups for making perfectly legal, reasonable decisions within the UK’s framework for fiscal policy is ultimately misleading, and counterproductive if the UK is to maintain a business friendly environment.