Corporate tax has become the great divider in the years after the 2008 crisis – a universal source of rage and exasperation, of inequality within countries and unfair competition between them. In London this year, I’ve witnessed riots against huge chain stores that have managed (legally) to pay zero tax. In Ireland, the country’s corporate rate of 12.5 per cent, the lowest in Western Europe, has become the object of a tug-of-war between Irish officials desperate to keep it and the German bankers bailing them out, who see it as a threat. In Canada, an election is being fought between Conservatives who would cut it to 15 per cent and Liberals who would raise it back to its 2010 level of 18 per cent.
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