Hares and tortoises

I’ve changed my mind about tax. When I heard that Amazon, Starbucks and others were paying minimal tax, my knee-jerk response was to dump Amazon and do my Christmas shopping elsewhere. I couldn’t dump Starbucks because I prefer Costa and Nero.
The Christmas presents arrived, but not quite as quickly, or as well-packaged as Amazon do. So why was I punishing Amazon for being cleverer? The Government doesn’t do what it does as well as Amazon does retail
The successful international companies operate above individual governments.
Starbucks and Amazon show what can be achieved by looking at the global picture rather than saying: in England we work this way, in France cette mode and so on.
Successful companies constantly review how they do what they do. If they stand still, some bright spark in Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai or Shanghai will disrupt their market faster than a speeding bullet.
Governments are concerned only with their country, their voters and are hamstrung by special interest groups who threaten to vote for the other lot if anything changes. We in Britain are the best example of this. Join forces with Europe? Not likely. Improve the way we run the Health Service, the BBC, our local councils? Heaven forbid.
If politicians want international companies to pay more tax, they must become cleverer.
Simplify the tax system. Look at how the world works, not simply how we in Britain work.
Work out how to attract international companies and see the benefit of having them here in terms of jobs and business, not just tax.
Europe has more success with international companies than we do because it is more beneficial for a company to deal with Europe than with individual governments.
Whipping up anger about international companies not paying tax doesn’t achieve anything. Working out how to keep pace with the cleverest companies in the world would.