Sure but then why not just raise taxes on UK citizens?

The whole point of this tax is to penalize the "tech giants" which happen to all be American, and it won't really do that.

Those companies are 100% American: they rely on technologies like the Web invented by an English scientist working at the frontier of France and Switzerland. They rely on algorithms invented by Russian, French, German scientist. They hire students from university around the world, to be engineers, managers, salesperson for clients also from everywhere in the world.

If those companies want to keep on hiring people without staggering student’s debt, they need to contribute to the local economy. I know they already do that (I worked for such companies for long enough, and paid a lot of taxes locally) but my point was twofold:

- paying more tax is often a good thing for the people who are going to benefit from the corresponding government services; that is certainly the case in the UK;

- if your company develops, promotes and sells products in a country, it makes sense to also pay added-value- and profit-tax there, and not avoid tax by claiming that the value was created in a tax shelter like Suriname, where you have no activity.

I take it you have never encountered the competence of a U.K. government-run service?

I grew up in the UK and I’ve lived there for the last four years. I’ve lived and paid taxes in six other countries so I’m happy to compare.

There certainly are possible improvements, but it’s overall very well managed and there are here many aspects of how civil servants are trying to improve at the same time the cost, the efficiency, the quality but also how to think about the service that touched me. The National Health Service, for instance, is a little bare-bones but the cheapest developed health service there is. The Land Registry is incredibly helpful, especially when you depend on reliable, sensical data for your business. The BBC is expensive but peerless. Transport for London, for all its sins and there are many, transport more people, faster, further, more reliably than anyone; it’s heavily dependent on having redundancy rather than reliability but at least it works often enough. Social services are minimal and insufficient, but nowhere else can people find jobs so easily if they are motivated and willing to learn. That is also not just due to companies, but also government services that manage to let people employ others without making it too difficult.

I sincerely believe that the same system, without the stress that the Tory government is putting on the budget for education, police and health, could be world-class.