Secretive TTIP will give huge corporations far-reaching powers and put profits before people.

SECRETIVE TTIP WILL GIVE HUGE CORPORATIONS FAR-REACHING NEW POWERS

Tomorrow on Thursday 15th January our MP's will debate a motion put forward by Labour MP Geraint Davies: EDM (Early Day Motion) 202 tabled in July 2014.

This is about a trade agreement known as TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) which is currently under negotiation between the EU and the USA.

However, the governments of the individual EU countries are not getting an automatic right to debate TTIP

The TTIP agreement will heavily favour profits over people because corporations will be able to secretly sue Governments if they feel that their profits are being affected by measures like food standards regulations, workers' rights, environmental protection rules and safety regulations. 

Big corporations will be able to sue governments because the agreement will include ISDS: Investor-State Dispute Settlements and these settlements will be held in secrecy, further undermining our democratic rights.

Geraint's EDM runs as follows:=

That this House notes that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership includes investor-state dispute settlements that are being designed in secret, so enabling multi-national companies to intimidate and sue governments for lost profits due to Government policies designed to protect the public as consumers or workers or to change the level of public ownership, that such settlements will be decided in private by arbitration panels, not in open court, that such actions and arrangements threaten to compromise the UK's established democracy, human rights and the rule of law and that the shared fruits of trade should not be at the expense of the social and economic justice that democracy demands; and therefore calls on the Government to ensure that all proposed arrangements are fully scrutinised by Parliament and that no arrangements are made which compromise established standards of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Basically Geraint Davies is calling for all proposed arrangements in connection with TTIP to be scrutinised by our own MP's here in the UK Parliament and not just by the EU, otherwise the agreement will be made and Parliament will be helpless to change it.

38 Degrees are asking people to petition their MP's ahead of the vote on Thursday 15th January 2015

http://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/18?constituency_id=299&zip=IP3%209AF

Put people before profits and contact your MP today

Sally Wainman

VAT MOSS Twitter Storm planned for 16th December at 10am

Twitter Storm on “VAT MOSS” planned for 16^th December 10am

It is more than likely that the headline of this article will mean very little to you, but for small and micro-businesses the EU juggernaut is about to plunge them into a new  VAT nightmare from January 1^st 2015.

The ruling affects any business supplying digital services to customers in the EU. At the moment VAT is charged in the country supplying the service so that UK businesses simply fill in VAT returns in the UK and, of course, only need to register for VAT if their turnover is above £81,000

From January 1^st the supplier will have to document the country of purchase and pay VAT in that country.  Now there are 28 EU states and a huge variation in VAT and furthermore there is no minimum threshold on turnover, so even the smallest kitchen table digital business will have to register for VAT.

HMRC is offering VAT  MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop) but businesses are being told they will have to keep records for ten years, make quarterly returns and of course will have to put prices up or absorb the VAT of the purchasing country!

The Government is claiming that this has been in the pipeline for years and everyone should know about it but SME’s (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) have reacted with horror at the complexity of the whole “VAT MESS” and many say they will simply stop trading.

There is a petition on Change.org and a twitter storm is planned for 16^th December at 10am

https://www.change.org/p/vince-cable-mp-uphold-the-vat-exemption-threshold-for-businesses-supplying-digital-products?tk=jheLI6sRfADo6CnEZ2g-tqnDEcN-rz2lNAHpExXdvGk&utm_source=petition_update&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=petition_update_email

Sally Wainman

15^th December 2014