YES we would support closing the Mayfair loophole, and more!

While public spending is being cut to the bone, big companies are not even paying the very low levels of corporation tax demanded of them. A National Audit Office report showed that more than 400 of the 800 largest businesses paid less than £10 million in tax in 2012/13 and around 160 paid no corporation tax at all. Imagine how many public services that have been closed – including libraries, community centres and youth centres – could have been saved if these big companies had paid up what they owed.

It is little surprise that big business has got away with this when successive governments have assisted them in doing so. At least 14 of the top 20 donors to the Tory party are linked to ‘tax havens’. But with Labour recently declaring that it is “furiously, passionately, aggressively pro-business” it cannot be trusted to act either.

TUSC’s general election platform states: “Tax the rich. For progressive tax on rich corporations and individuals and an end to tax avoidance”. We also campaign for the cutbacks in Revenue and Customs to be reversed to enable rich tax dodgers to be pursued.

However, we think there are also wider issues here. The whole banking system is rotten, based on gambling and speculation. It needs reorganising and rationally planning. But you can’t plan what you don’t control, and you don’t control what you don’t own. Large amounts of Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland are in public ownership, but not under democratic control. Nationalisation should be extended to the whole banking system and tight regulation then enforced in the interests of the millions not the millionaires.

This is not a poor country, yet millions live below the poverty line, with over 7,000 using foodbanks in Southwark alone! The problem is we have an economic system, backed up by the main establishment parties, which means vast wealth is concentrated at the very top. The key point is that the minority at the top own and control this wealth, whilst most of us struggle to get by. We think we need a radical change, whereby ownership and control of the main resources in society are put in the hands of ordinary people, and human need (such as the NHS, decent housing and free education) are put before private greed.

Labour has called for a public inquiry. But with Tristram Hunt, the shadow education minister, declaring that Labour is “furiously, passionately, aggressively pro-business”, expresses there is little chance that it would do anything to curb these excesses.

These billions held by HSBC in Switzerland, and all of the money held in other tax havens around the globe, should be invested productively to provide jobs, services and a better quality of life for ordinary people.

What else would we do?

We would:

1. Build council houses at the rate that was needed, which were secure tenancies, accessible and fair council rent and we would implement a rent control, these two measures alone could turn the housing crisis round.

2. We would reverse all NHS cuts and end PFI. We would reverse ALL welfare cuts, not only the Bedroom Tax.

3. We would implement a £10ph National Minimum wage lifting millions out of poverty.

The money is there, it is the will to stand up with our communities.I would vote to end the tax dodge loophole but go further to bring real changes to the 99%.

Kingsley Abrams

Prospective Parliamentary candidate (Bermondsey & Old Southwark) we would love for you to get involved and support our campaign any way you can:

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