Seems Shell have announced record profits for a UK company - $17.5 billion. That's a lot of money. Some MPs are calling for a 'windfall tax on multinational energy companies' profits', which seems a mite specific to me. Surely a better approach might be to make sure that when a company announces a profit that large, they end up paying the right amount of corporation tax on it, rather than slipping through so many tax loopholes that they end up with an apology and a 50 pence rebate from the Inland Revenue.
Obviously unbiased reaction to these calls from Lib Dem energy spokesman and former Shell economist Vince Cable (yet another example of the eclectic backgrounds and curious names common in the Lib Dem parliamentary party) makes for amusing reading:
He told the BBC that a tax would deter investment and threaten employment in the industry.
"We know from experience when governments try to move the goalposts, as they did two years ago when the petroleum tax was introduced, this has a very damaging effect on the industry," he said.
[Via BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]
Clearly, the industry was so deeply damaged by these tax changes two years ago, that it took them more than 20 months to recover to the position where Shell were able to post record profits for a UK company. You know, I'm sure there's a strong liberal economic anti-interventionist argument that can be made about the idea of the windfall tax, but I'm not convinced that that was it, Mr. Cable...