‘Tax regime drives 20% of big businesses to consider leaving UK’ declared a Daily Telegraph headline on 25 August. But the research conducted by TNS-BMRB for HMRC last year found that just over 10% of the 1 088 respondents had considered such a move.
Few businesses are taking the idea forward said Mark Lee chairman of the Tax Advice Network. Questions concerning possible relocation were ‘out of place’ in a survey about HMRC services he suggested.
The researchers said 18% of Large Business Service (LBS) businesses had considered relocating to another country for tax purposes. ‘This falls to 14% of Large and Complex (LC) customers with a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and only 5% of LC customers without a CRM ’ they added.
LC customers without a CRM represented more than half of the businesses questioned. In all 113 companies had considered relocating.
The...
