The Changing Ownership Of Government Debt
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In 2004 around 75% of Uk government debt was owned by insurance and pension companies. The rest was almost entirely owned by overseas interests, Banks held almost none, and nor did the government.
Now the Bank of England is the biggest owner:
The trend will continue. By the end of 2021 the Bank of England is set to own £895 billion of UK debt.
For those who say that there has been no such thing as direct monetary funding, or that the government cannot fund itself, or that there is no magic money tree, the evidence to the contrary is very clear.
Last modified on Fri 9 Apr 2021 16.57 EDT
Rishi Sunak has been urged to throw his full weight behind US proposals for a global minimum corporate tax rate after analysis showed it would bring in an extra £13.5bn a year for the public purse.
The campaign group Tax Justice UK said the Biden administration plan would help raise billions of pounds a year for the UK exchequer by hitting multinationals and US tech companies operating in the country with higher tax bills, including firms such as Amazon, Apple, Google owner Alphabet and Facebook.
Under the US blueprint, the worldâs 100 most profitable multinationals would be forced to pay taxes to national governments based on the sales they generate in each country, irrespective of where they are based. It would also establish a global minimum tax rate to help bring an end to profit-shifting by multinationals and discourage countries from undercutting each other on tax rates. Washington has suggested a rate of 21%.
President Joe Biden has proposed sweeping global tax reforms that would limit the ability of multinational corporations to shift profits overseas, while taking steps to forge a landmark agreement on a worldwide minimum tax rate.
The proposals are designed to tackle the very low rates of tax paid by the digital giants Google, Facebook and Apple, and major brands like Nike and Starbucks, which have become adept at using complicated webs of companies to shift profits out of major markets like the UK, where most of their revenues are earned, and into low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland and the Caribbean. Economists estimate that the sums lost to exchequers around the world from profit-shifting have risen as high as $427bn (£311bn) annually.