Back in 2017 Co- was first accounting practice in the country to be awarded the Fair Tax Mark and have kept it ever since. Here is why we believe this is the right thing for business.

Customers want us to play fair

Increasingly the public want to do business with people who care about their environment and society. They understand that legal does not mean ethical and more and more they expect business owners to act ethically.

At a corporate level there is a growing body of councils that prefer to add businesses with the Fair Tax Mark to approved supplier lists, clear that it is untenable to spend tax payers money with companies that cheat the taxman.

levelling the playing field

The legal but unethical tax arrangements that are available to larger businesses are simply not available to smaller businesses. The cost of setting them up is prohibitive even if the business owner wanted to engage in them, which in fact most small business owners don’t.

The effect is a playing field that is not level. The larger businesses affording themselves of the tax practices that the Fair Tax Mark cuts out give themselves a serious competitive advantage over their rivals who refrain.

Quite simply businesses that play fair will retain less profit. And customers need to know that this could be a reason why things cost more from a small local business.

The Fair Tax Mark gives a small business’s customers a reason to spend a bit more and with it the small business has regained some leverage back over its larger and less ethical rivals.

It’s not a hair shirt

What we imagine many businesses do not realise is that they already qualify. As we said before they haven’t set up the schemes that Fair Tax Mark prohibits because they aren’t affordable or even desirable to them.

The Fair Tax Mark does not mean the end to the perfectly reasonable tax planning we do with all clients.

Paying less tax

The more tax that is lost from unethical tax practices, the more the government will need to raise taxes from everyone else. The Fair Tax Mark is therefore a way for small business owners to protect themselves from tax hikes.

President Biden’s call for a minimum global Corporation Tax rate of 15% would, it has been estimated, raise £13.5bn per year for HMRC. That is money that would not as a result need to be found elsewhere and raises increased possibility of tax cuts for the rest of us.

More information

We hope more small businesses will follow our suit joining a growing list of accredited organisations. If you are interested this is how the process goes: https://fairtaxmark.net/getting-the-mark/the-process/