The truth about corporate taxes

I’ve chosen to write about corporate tax rates this week not because they’re the sexiest subject available but because – unlike the government’s frontbench, the value of the pound and the scale of winter fuel bills – they’re unlikely to change dramatically during the shelf-life of this column. An increase in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent, originally announced by Rishi Sunak, will go ahead in April, despite new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s own leadership campaign pledge to cut the rate to 15 per cent, which would have placed the UK between Ireland and Singapore in competitive tax tables. The uplift will, we’re told, tip £19 billion (based on HMRC’s reckoner of £3.1 billion per percentage point) into the public-finance black hole which so spooked the bond market. So that’s all right then.

But in reality, the corporate tax take is a dynamic function of business efficiency, economic health and international reputation.