The latest Economics Society meeting had the pleasure of welcoming Alison Lynch to talk about the UK tax system. In 2009, Mrs Lynch founded and headed one of the largest Research and Development (R&D) tax relief specialist firms, before selling it in 2014. She now runs an even larger tax consultancy firm, Abbey+.
Her talk focused on the different taxes that the government levies, and how the revenue is collected from both the consumer and the manufacturer. She illustrated what could have otherwise been quite a dry topic with examples ranging from Jaffa Cakes to Cornish Pasties.
She then discussed the moral issues surrounding legal tax avoidance, a topical issue given the controversy with multinationals such as Starbucks, Google and Facebook. She drew a distinction between aggressive tax avoidance used by firms such as PwC, which use contrived loopholes in the law, and genuine schemes to reduce taxes.
Her final points were on the antithesis of tax, subsidies. Her current work focuses on identifying R&D grants for a variety of different companies, including relatively low tech manufacturing firms, as the scheme is applicable to ‘any research done to improve a process or improve efficiency’.
Anthony Orr (F)