| Founded | October 2010 |
|---|---|
| Type | Advocacy group |
| Focus | Anti-austerity, Tax avoidance |
| Location |
|
Area served | United Kingdom |
| Method | Demonstration |
| Website | https://www.uk-uncut.com |
UK Uncut was a network of United Kingdom-based protest groups established in October 2010 to protest against cuts to public services and tax avoidance in the UK. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Various sources have described the group as left-wing in its political orientation. [7] [8] [9]
The idea of UK Uncut originated in October 2010 with a group of ten activists in a north London pub who claimed that clamping down on tax avoidance would be a credible alternative to public sector spending cuts. Private Eye had recently published an article alleging that Vodafone had reached a highly favourable settlement of a long-standing tax dispute with HM Revenue and Customs so they organised a protest against a store on Oxford Street. Protesters met at Piccadilly and successfully closed the store. [10]
The group uses direct action to disrupt the business of high street stores and banks that they believe have a connection with tax avoidance. [1] Actions are organised independently by local UK Uncut groups and promoted through the UK Uncut website.
Vodafone was targeted after Private Eye alleged that a deal they made with HM Revenue and Customs substantially reduced the amount of back taxes that they had to pay. Private Eye alleged that Vodafone were originally found liable for £6 billion, but negotiated the amount to be paid down to under £2 billion. [11] However, the National Audit Office said that the settlement represented reasonable value for the British taxpayer. [12]
The Arcadia Group's shops including Topshop, BHS, and Burton have been targeted as the group is owned by Tina Green, the wife of Sir Phillip Green. Tina Green is a resident of Monaco and was able to receive a dividend of £1.2bn from the group free of UK income tax in 2005. [13]
Boots was targeted on 30 January 2011 as the protesters claimed it avoided UK tax by being registered in Switzerland. Three people needed hospital treatment after police used CS spray when attempting to arrest a protester. [14] [15] [16]
Fortnum & Mason was targeted during 26 March 2011 anti-cuts protests. UK Uncut claimed that the parent company, Wittington Investments was "guilty of tax avoidance". [17] This took the form of a mass sit-in. The police arrested and charged 138 protesters with aggravated trespass. [18] Of these, ten were convicted and were given a conditional discharge and fined £1,000. [19] Their convictions were upheld at the Court of Appeal. [20]
In November 2011, the legal arm of UK Uncut took HM Revenue & Customs to court. HMRC had been accused of failing to provide substantial reasons for not collecting billions of pounds in tax revenue. [21]
HMRC are unable to comment on specific taxpayers' tax affairs. Instead, the National Audit Office (NAO) were asked to review the settlements in question, one being Vodafone, as mentioned above. The NAO found that "the settlements reached by HMRC in these five cases were all reasonable". [12]
Through meetings on Twitter at the end of January it was decided that the next UK Uncut targets would be banks that were alleged to have caused the financial crisis and had been bailed out by the government with billions of pounds. UK Uncut called for people to stage "bail-ins" to turn banks into things that UK Uncut perceived as being threatened by the cuts. [22]
HSBC have also been accused of avoiding £2 billion worth of tax by Private Eye magazine by using a complicated system of channeling profits through the Netherlands,. [23]
On 19 February 2011, Barclays was targeted. The date was arranged to coincide with their bonus announcements. It was also alleged that Barclays was only paying 1% corporation tax in the UK. [24]
On 26 February, a day of action was called against the Royal Bank of Scotland and their subsidiary NatWest. The protest was arranged to coincide with the banks' bonus announcements. Once again protestors turned bank branches into services that they considered were threatened by the cuts. [25]
On 9 October 2011, 2,000 health workers and activists took part in a sit-down protest on Westminster Bridge organised by UK Uncut in opposition to the proposed Health and Social Care Bill. [26]
The group has also targeted Atos, an IT company whose healthcare division operates a program for the Department for Work and Pensions to assess workers claiming disability benefits to see if they are "incapable" of work. Critics have felt that its program has lacked integrity and that its real goal is to divert funding from the disabled due to a lowered budget.[ citation needed ] The group also felt that it was inappropriate for Atos to sponsor the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, a complementary event to the Olympics for the disabled given how its operation of the program has impacted the lives of many disabled workers through the denial of benefits. UK Uncut held a week of protests dubbed "The Atos Games" during the last week of August to coincide with the start of the Paralympics ending with a joint demonstration with Disabled People Against Cuts on 31 August outside the London headquarters of Atos and the Department for Work and Pensions. [27]
UK Uncut protesters, who were unimpressed by Starbucks' offer to pay £20 million corporation tax in the next two years, took part in protests in December 2012. [28] [29]
A similar protest group inspired by UK Uncut has formed in the US under the name US Uncut. [30] The protest also spread to other European countries, creating decentralized protest groups like Portugal Uncut. [31] A group called Take VAT targeted several companies avoiding VAT by selling goods to the UK through the Channel Islands. [32]
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes. Tax avoidance should not be confused with tax evasion, which is illegal.
Vodafone Group Plc is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.
HM Revenue and Customs is a non-ministerial department of the UK Government responsible for the collection of taxes, the payment of some forms of state support, the administration of other regulatory regimes including the national minimum wage and the issuance of national insurance numbers. HMRC was formed by the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise, which took effect on 18 April 2005. The department's logo is the St Edward's Crown enclosed within a circle. Prior to the Queen's death on 8 September 2022, the department was known as Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and has since been amended to reflect the change of monarch.
Atos is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company headquartered in Bezons, France, and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communications, cloud, big data and cybersecurity services. Atos operates worldwide under the brands Atos, Atos|Syntel, Atos Consulting, Atos Healthcare, Atos Worldgrid, Groupe Bull, Canopy, Maven Wave, and Unify.
Associated British Foods plc (ABF) is a British multinational food processing and retailing company headquartered in London, England. Its ingredients division is the world's second-largest producer of both sugar and baker's yeast and a major producer of other ingredients including emulsifiers, enzymes and lactose. Its grocery division is a major manufacturer of both branded and private label grocery products and includes the brands Mazola, Ovaltine, Ryvita, Jordans and Twinings. Its retail division, Primark, has some 384 stores across several countries, predominantly Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, and the UK. ACH Food Companies is an American subsidiary.
Fortnum & Mason is an upmarket department store in Piccadilly, London, with additional stores at The Royal Exchange, St Pancras railway station, Heathrow Airport in London and K11 Musea In Hong Kong, as well as various stockists worldwide. Its headquarters are located at 181 Piccadilly, where it was established in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason. Today, it is privately owned by Wittington Investments Limited.
The Garfield Weston Foundation is a grant-giving charity based in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1958 by Canadian businessman W. Garfield Weston (1898–1978), who during his lifetime contributed to numerous humanitarian causes, both personally and through his companies. His philanthropic works continue through the Garfield Weston Foundation in London and the Weston Family Foundation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
David Anthony Hartnett CB is a former British civil servant who served as the Permanent Secretary for Tax at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) until his retirement in July 2012. Following his retirement he advised HSBC on financial crime governance alongside former Director General of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Bill Hughes.
The anti-austerity movement refers to the mobilisation of street protests and grassroots campaigns that has happened across various countries, especially in Europe, since the onset of the worldwide Great Recession.
Richard Murphy is a British chartered accountant and political economist who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion. He advises the Trades Union Congress on economics and taxation, and founded the Tax Justice Network. He is a Professor of Accounting Practice at University of Sheffield Management School.
Cristina Stuart Green, Lady Green, known as Tina Green, is an English businesswoman and interior designer. Green is the director of Taveta, the majority owner of Taveta Investments Ltd, the parent company of the Arcadia Group, of which her husband, Sir Philip Green, is chairman. The Arcadia Group owned the clothing retail chains Topshop and Topman, as well as Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Outfit, and Wallis. Taveta owned British Homes Stores (BHS) before its 2015 sale. BHS was placed into administration in 2016, and the Arcadia Group was placed into administration in 2020. Green formed the interior design company Green & Mingarelli with the Italian designer Pietro Mingarelli.
Vodafone India Limited was the Indian subsidiary of UK-based Vodafone Group plc and was a provider of Telecommunications services in India with its operational head office in Mumbai. As of March 2018, Vodafone India had a market share of 21% and with its merger with Idea, the collective Vodafone Idea network has approximately 375 million subscribers and is the Third largest mobile telecommunications network in India.
The anti-austerity movement in the United Kingdom saw major demonstrations throughout the 2010s in response to Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government's austerity measures which saw significant reductions in local council budgets, increasing of university tuition fees and reduction of public spending on welfare, education, health and policing, among others. Anti-austerity protests became a prominent part of popular demonstrations across the 2010s, particularly the first half of the decade.
The 2011 anti-cuts protest in London, also known as the March for the Alternative, was a demonstration held in central London on 26 March 2011. Organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), it was a protest march against planned public spending cuts by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government that was formed in May 2010.
US Uncut was a decentralized direct action group in the United States established in February 2011 to draw attention to corporate tax avoidance, cuts to social spending, and public sector jobs.
Occupy London was a political movement in London, England, and part of the international Occupy movement. While some media described it as an "anti-capitalist" movement, in the statement written and endorsed by consensus by the Occupy assembly in the first two days of the occupation, occupiers defined themselves as a movement working to create alternatives to an "unjust and undemocratic" system. A second statement endorsed the following day called for "real global democracy". Due to a pre-emptive injunction, the protesters were prevented from their original aim to camp outside the London Stock Exchange. A camp was set up nearby next to St Paul's Cathedral. On 18 January 2012, Mr Justice Lindblom granted an injunction against continuation of the protest but the protesters remained in place pending an appeal. The appeal was refused on 22 February, and just past midnight on 28 February, bailiffs supported by City of London Police began to remove the tents.
Richard Brooks is a British investigative journalist and former tax inspector. He writes principally for Private Eye, is the author of books on accountancy and tax avoidance, and was a 16-year senior corporate tax inspector for HMRC. He is the joint winner of two Paul Foot Awards, an annual award for investigative or campaigning journalism.
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) is an organisation based in the United Kingdom for disabled people and allies to campaign against the impact of government spending cuts on the lives of disabled people. Formed on 3 October 2010 DPAC promotes full human rights and equality for all disabled people, and operates from the Social Model of Disability.
Starbucks, an American coffee company and coffeehouse chain, has been the subject of multiple controversies. Public and employee criticism against the company has come from around the world, including a wide range issues from tax avoidance in Europe, anti-competitive practices in the United States, human rights issues in multiple countries, and labor issues involving union busting, questions about pay equity, and ethics in partnerships in Africa.
Sir John Edward Astley Troup is a British tax lawyer, and was a civil servant at HM Treasury and then HM Revenue & Customs. He spent two periods as a tax partner at the law firm Simmons & Simmons, from 1985 to 1995 and from 1997 to 2004, and was a special adviser to Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1995-97.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| Protests |
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