Going it alone with territorial tax would gift our business to offshore competitors

If we were to adopt corporate territorial tax without Jersey doing the same, it would be commercial suicide. (I am not so much concerned about the Isle of Man as they are less of a competitor to us these days, although that could change very quickly if we are stupid enough to gift our business away on a plate to whoever wants it.) We’d be forcing all ‘offshore’ companies to do considerable extra tax filings, adding cost to them being here and resulting in a material commercial disadvantage.

I’m led to believe that Jersey won’t contemplate amending their corporate tax regime just to suit us, particularly due to our stubbornness over GST. Those who actually understand commercial competition know exactly how dangerous this would be to our economy.

What has always surprised me though is why the three Crown Dependencies haven’t collectively moved from zero-10 to zero-15, thereby collecting 50% more tax from those companies already paying 10%, which in most cases would be entirely neutral as they’d be offsetting 15% against 20% personal tax liability for resident shareholders, while non-resident shareholders would have 15% rather than 10% of foreign tax to credit against their domestic tax bill. Only a handful of parent companies would perhaps be worse off. It would also align with the Pillar 2 rate of 15% – which of course only applies to certain multinational groups. We could even go to zero-12.5% rather than zero-15%.

But only consider doing it alongside the other Crown Dependencies – it would be useful extra ‘safe’ tax revenue for them too.

DAVID PIESING