Barclays : £11.6 billion profits - 1% tax

It couldn't be clearer. As reported in today's Guardian, Barclay's boss was forced to admit that the bank paid  just £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 – a year when it rang up a record £11.6bn of profits. Corporation tax in the UK currently stands at 28% (although the government intends to reduce it to 24%). Logically, they should have paid £3.25 billion in corporation tax,  but obviously thought that paying billions in bonuses was much better.

Barclay's boss claims that Barclay's is doing nothing illegal. OK - that's because the UK government is not doing it's job of defending the interests of the British People.  But even if it isn't illegal, it certainly is immoral.

The government wants to reduce the corporation tax rate to 24%. But you might wonder why they need to bother when the tax system is so full of loopholes that multinationals pay virturally nothing  anyway, thanks to the obscene system of tax havens revealed in Nick Shaxson's excellent book "Treasure Islands". And with the government's plans for corporation tax "reform" (revealed in George Monbiot's comment last week), it is pretty obvious that this situation will only get worse.

It's interesting that information about how much corporation tax Barclay's pays was only revealed after pressure from Labout MP Chuka Umanna, a member of the Treasury Select Committee. Why is this information not public? Why can't I find a table with the amount of corporation tax paid by UK companies relative to their turn-over and profits?? Why do we only hear that one third of the 700 top UK companies paid no corporation tax at all in 2007? What has happened since then?
I bet you several beers that while all normal people are having to pay more and more tax, the percentage of financial groups that pay tax is dropping.