Barclays Swindling Us All

I never really swallowed the line about if we keep hitting the banks they will just go abroad and take all their money with them. My answer was we should double our efforts and wave them goodbye from the quayside because they are obviously not very good at their jobs as the £200bn bail out painfully shows.
Turns out that they were taking all their money abroad anyway with a letter from Barclays admitting that it paid just £113m in corporation tax in 2009 while totting up a record £11.6bn of profits.
The HM Revenue & Customs website shows corporation tax is 28% and 28% of £11,600,000,000,000 isn't £113,000,000.
The Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who requested Barclays reveal the tax paid by the bank, described the figure as 1% of its 2009 profits and called it shocking.
When asked what tax Barclays paid by the Treasury select committee of MPs last month, the Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond said £2 Billion, knowing full well that most of that was tax paid by employees under the PAYE system.
Chuka Umanna may be shocked but he can't be surprised because Barclays is the latest in a round of high profile tax avoidance stories recently.
Last year Vodaphone's £6bn tax bill was settled by HM Revenue & Customs £4.8bn light and Boots the Chemist moved its headquarters to Switzerland and now pay just 3% in tax. Top shop owner, Phillip Green, awarded himself a huge dividend payout, £1.2 billion, in 2005 which went through various offshore accounts and tax dodges to his wife's Monaco bank account. And Green was appointed last year by David Cameron to advise the government on how to slash public spending!!
Barclays has been involved in controversy before, supporting the apartheid government in South Africa, a revelation that saw it's shares drop after a student boycott. It helps funds President Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe, was fined $298m for violating international money laundering rules and holds £7.3 billion in shares in arms manufacturers.
With that track record it isn't going to care about swindling the UK out of billions of pounds of tax while we all face severe cuts.
While they are taking bail out money from the tax payer and only pay 1% in Tax, i think its imperative that they do all sod off and let some other mug of a country pay for their mistakes and then receive a kick in the teeth and 1% as a thank you.