Thursday 12 February 2009

Dear Gordon

Mr Gordon Brown
Managing Director
United Kingdom (UK) Ltd

Dear Gordon

As the managing director of a medium sized enterprise, your organisation will, like many other similar enterprises, be suffering in the current financial downturn. We understand that due to some particularly bad investments that your own organisation is suffering worse than most. We have been advised that you are expecting a 4% drop in revenues leading to a drop in income of some £50 billion.

At times like this, it is of course, even more important that you ensure that monies owed to you are collected. Losing sales is bad enough but not collecting payments already owed will exacerbate the situation. Here is a link to some advice regarding this; http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?type=RESOURCES&itemId=1080400516

We are particularly concerned, in the case of your own organisation, that there is a considerable sum of owed monies in the form of income and corporate taxes that is simply not being paid by many of your biggest customers; http://www.tuc.org.uk/touchstone/Missingbillions/1missingbillions.pdf

Apparently the figures involved are between £25 and £85 billion a year! It is a little disconcerting that, prior to your recent promotion, you were the very person who could have ensured the payment of those unpaid monies. However, you dismissed the idea of legislation to create a “tax avoidance rule” making the evasion of the payment of taxes illegal. But as you have said yourself in the House of Commons “Everyone should pay a fair rate of tax, and there should be no tax avoidance” Column 1149 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmhansrd/vo000406/debtext/00406-04.htm

The chief means by which your largest customers avoid paying their bills is by the use of “tax havens” but when many of the European Union proposed a Tax Harmonisation Law as a way towards removing tax havens you rejected the idea http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/sep/27/politics.business

So at the same time that your organisation is seeing a drop in revenues, billions of pounds of income tax are being hidden in offshore tax havens thanks to a lack of action on your part. I am afraid the question has to be asked – are you actually up to the job of being in charge? Why don’t we put it to the vote?

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