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9am Lowdown
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9am Lowdown: Tax havens, automation & fraud

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23rd Mar 2017
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Good morning and welcome to Thursday’s Lowdown, which today features tax havens, fears of automation, and an accountant stole over £5m from a lifelong friend to renovate a Cornish hotel.  

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Tax havens will be bad news for Britain 

Richard Murphy has written an article for the Guardian explaining why becoming a tax haven will be bad news for Britain.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned the EU in the past that if the UK does not secure a favourable Brexit deal, the UK could adopt a more competitive tax regime. But Murphy said: “We might get all the downsides and none of the supposed gains if that’s the route we’re going to travel post-Brexit.”

Murphy argues that tax havens are undemocratic, people living in tax havens still have to pay tax, and house prices are pushed out of reach of most people. “The weirdest thing about life in a tax haven is that you have to get used to lying. You have to deny that you help tax avoiders and evaders, even though you do,” he said.

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Will robots take your job?

The CEO of Deloitte said the dramatic shifts in the future of work prompted her 15-year-old child to ask, “Are robots going to take my job someday?”

In a LinkedIn post, Cathy Engelbert revealed how Deloitte’s Global survey shows that 40% of millennial respondents see automation as posing a threat to their jobs and 44% believe there will be less demand for their skills.

To those who harbour concerns about the future, Engelbert shared her response to her son’s question. “I told him: “Don’t worry—I’ve never met a machine with courage and empathy.” We’ll still need those in the new economy. To be sure, technology will change what we do. Tasks that are highly manual, routine, and predictable will be automated.

She added: “I believe that the future of work means cooperation between humans and the robots. Making us, in the words of my teen, ‘co-bots’.”

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Accountant's fraud betrayed a lifelong friend 

A City accountant who stole £5,080,713 over a six year period from a friend’s charitable foundation and property company to fund his own accountancy firm, a Cambridgeshire home and a St Ives hotel has been jailed for eight years.

According to the MailOnline, Edward Tully sent falsified reports to his Allen Skolnick, his businessman friend, before transferring the money into his own account. Tully’s fraud only came to light when Skolnick was unable to withdraw £50,000 from the UK account.

Judge Mark Bishop said: “Given the backdrop of your life long friendship when you knew Mr Skolnick and his son, you ruthlessly abused their trust and stole over five million from their companies over the period of six years.” Tully was disqualified from being a director for eight years and jailed for eight years. He admitted to the fraud. 

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