Yorkshire Water has defended its non-payment of corporation tax this year saying the hundreds of millions it invests in infrastructure and keeping bills down means it is exempt from payment. The Bradford-based group said it will pay out £111.5m in other taxes this year such as business rates, employee taxes and VAT.
Source: Yorkshire Post
We Say: There’s no suggestion of tax avoidance here, as far as we know. Things have come to a pretty pass when a company feels the need to defend itself because the application of uncontroversial tax laws to its business give the normal, expected and entirely predictable result that relief for its capital expenditure results in its paying no tax. That’s about as far from avoidance as it’s possible to get.