This week's opinion: 14 January 2021

If like me you are a fan of Dr Who (I remember watching the first episode in 1963), you will have spotted the reference to tax avoidance by multinational corporations in the new year’s day special episode (14 and a half minutes in if you missed it). 

While that was entertaining, it did make me think about how far public interest in the tax affairs of large businesses has come – such a reference would have been inconceivable only a few years ago. 

I do not complain about this: indeed as a magazine we have always encouraged the widest debate about all aspects of tax, but there is, appropriately for Dr Who, an element of time distortion in this. Perhaps ten or so years ago there was legitimate concern about the attitude to tax by some large businesses – though I always thought that even then those concerns were exaggerated – but everything that I see and hear now reassures me that large businesses and their advisers are taking a very measured approach to their tax policies. Anybody who approaches a FTSE100 company with a whizzy pre-packaged tax scheme is likely to be shown the door in less time than the Tardis takes to dematerialise. But conveying this message to the general public will be an uphill task. 

Incidentally I did wonder about where Dr Who pays her taxes and how she would fare under the statutory residence test – she does seem to have spent a lot of time in the UK. Perhaps in the next series her deadliest enemy could turn out not to be a dalek but somebody from HMRC anti-avoidance unit. ‘Dr Who and the Follower Notice’: you heard it here first!