Disquiet Grows About Hypocritical Guardian’s 4.99% Tax Rate
The Telegraph’s city pages have caught up this morning with Guido’s revelation yesterday that GMG, the owners of the Guardian, perfectly legally had an effective tax rate of 4.99% after taking advantage of a tax holiday last year despite making a headline profit of £300m from the disposal of 49.9% of Auto Trader.
The hypocrisy of them attacking Tesco for tax avoidance when they themselves pay an even lower rate of tax is laughable. (They are currently in the libel courts and look like they are going to lose to Tesco having already admitted their story was bollocks).
The Telegraph quoted Grant Thornton’s senior tax partner Mike Warburton saying: “Guardian Media Group has enjoyed a tax holiday courtesy of some very helpful rules introduced by their friend Gordon Brown. They are taking full advantage of the relief legally available to them, which all businesses should do. That’s fine, but don’t knock people who do exactly the same.”
This is almost as much fun as Polly hypocritically banging on about airplane carbon emissions before hopping on a flight to her Tuscan villa. See Richard Littlejohn’s fantastic bitch-slap here…
