HSBC is threatening to leave Britain. "From a tax point of view, the UK is not the best place to be," warned its head of group financial planning and tax. Does he mean it, or is the bank just rattling the chancellor's cage ahead of the pre-budget report? Business enjoys bullying Labour. (But does HSBC remember that it was allowed to eat up Midland Bank only on the condition that it moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to Britain: could the Competition Commission act?) HSBC made £11.5bn profit last year, more than any bank before. It may be a small gesture, but "the world's global bank" deserves some retaliatory bullying from its customers; anyone with an HSBC account could move to the Co-op. (Call 08457 212212, and they'll do it all for you - it's easier than you think.)

Instead of challenging HSBC's threat to defect, George Osborne leapt to back it up. "This is yet more evidence that the increasing complexity of our tax system is harming the economy," the shadow chancellor said. "We urgently need simpler, fairer taxes." But HSBC didn't say simpler; it said less, which is exactly what Osborne means too. His "simpler, fairer" is always code for less.

As it happens, corporation taxes have been cut by Gordon Brown. How high are our business taxes? The UK's tax-to-GDP ratio is still below the EU 15 average and well below its 1982 peak. The Daily Mail yesterday splashed on "Britain's Taxes Soaring" as the overall take rose to 37.2% of GDP. But the survey - by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development - that produced these figures also said that the UK's "higher tax ratios are the result of stronger economic growth". The successful Nordic economies have tax rates that are more than 10 percentage points higher than the UK's. 

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