Anger at City banks paying little or no corporation tax

Remind me again how massive their contribution to the UK is and how we must all bend over just in case they sod off to Frankfurt...

While I am sure they ahve sued as many legal loopholes as possible it seems that the main one is writing off past years losses against this years profits

Not exactly a complex, dodgy tax loophole - I used that from SWMBO business as I was able to write off the losses (in setting up the business) against the first couple of years profits - resulting in her only paying £10 tax on the profits in tax over 2 years

True, a lot of it is legal. Almost certainly because they asked for it to be, but nevertheless.

The thing about it that particularly irks me is they all made massive losses due to their own incompetence, the state rescued them when they should all have gone out of business due to those losses, and now they're using those losses as an excuse not to pay any tax back to the state. It's not as if they can't afford to actually - whatever the possible effect of those losses were, the state insulated them from it. So once again it's privatised profits, nationalised losses.

Aside from all of that, the point remains - whenever someone bangs on about how vital to the UK these businesses are, the bare fact is now and apparently for about the next decade, they pretty much aren't. They're benefiting nobody but themselves.