However, Stephen Barclay, an MP on the public accounts committee, yesterday put the figure even higher than that.
“We are looking at potentially £8 billion of tax lost,” he said during a hearing. “We’re looking at a company that was given five years to pay even though it was sitting on a cash pile.”
Despite being HMRC’s most senior solicitor, Mr Inglese admitted he was “not what you’d call a tax lawyer” and said he could not comment on the deal.
“All I can say is lawyers were involved throughout,” he said.
The MPs suggested there need to be much greater oversight of tax deals with big companies.
HMRC is also under fire for letting Goldman Sachs, the giant US investment bank, off paying £10 million interest on a long disputed tax bill.
Mr Hartnett has previously admitted this was a mistake. He confirmed yesterday that lawyers were initially not consulted about whether Goldman Sachs was liable for the interest on a £30 million bill from a failed tax avoidance scheme on bankers’ bonuses.
Mr Hartnett says he was advised by an official that there was a “legal impediment” to charging interest, which later turned out not to be the case.
He is under severe pressure over the deals, but yesterday insisted that he had no intention of resigning. Mr Hartnett told the MPs that an official was not paid his bonus because of the blunder.
Margaret Hodge, chairman of the public accounts committee, remained unsatisfied with the situation. She said it “sticks in the gullet” that Goldman Sachs got a deal not available to ordinary people struggling with their tax bills.
“It feels so, so wrong,” she said. “The perception is there has been huge reputational damage to HMRC. If I was sitting at Goldman Sachs, I would be rubbing my hands because they'd think we beat 'em to it and got off the tax bill.”
Companies that have struck “sweetheart” deals with HMRC have been targeted by protestors. Some of Vodafone’s high street shops were blockaded by campaigners last year.
A spokesman for Vodafone said: “Vodafone has never received a tax liability of £6bn or £8 billion. HMRC themselves have called this an ‘urban myth’. Vodafone does not have an unpaid tax bill in the UK – the allegations are unfounded.”
Samsung Galaxy S3: Virtual Showdown of Voice Assistants S Voice and Siri [VIDEO] - ibtimes.co.uk
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Samsung's answer to Apple's Siri is reportedly an advanced natural language User Interface (UI) that will allow, in addition to voice-activated information searches and device-user communication, a degree of control over device functions and commands. It can, for example, be used to set alarms, play songs, control audio volumes, send texts and emails and organise schedules. It also controls the camera app on the phone.
Unsurprisingly, both S Voice and Siri demand properly enunciated user commands, rely on search engines to provide answers and tend to redirect queries to a Google search. Apple seems to have an advantage over Samsung in terms of the speed with which the programmes respond to queries, as well as the depth of answers. Siri, for example does not provide for results of a search within the country of the user and does not help with location-based queries, unlike S Voice according to a report on The Verge. In addition, Siri tends to talk a little more than S Voice, which comes with an audio-off option.
Essentially, while Siri responds faster, the S Voice offers a greater array of performance-related options, meaning, theoretically, one can do more with Samsung's assistant than Apple's.
GSM Arena also ran comparisons and they included the Speaktoit Assistant (for Android). The results were mixed. The test involved a series of questions tasking all programmes with basic operations like sending texts, enquiring after traffic conditions, recovering information for basic (random?) trivia questions and interfacing with social networking Web sites - Facebook.
On the whole, S Voice and Siri performed better than Speaktoit, which was to be expected; the notable exception was the request to update Facebook with a new status - Siri was unable to comply while the other two did. Between Samsung's and Apple's programmes, however, the primary difference seemed to be speed of response, with Siri, once again, shading S Voice to the post.
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Vodafone admits goof-up in IPL promotional SMS - Deccan Herald
Vodafone has admitted goof up in an IPL promotional message in sending out an SMS to its subscribers that Chennai Super Kings (CSK) will be in the final, much before it qualified.
An SMS sent sent out to the subscribers of the company on Friday morning announced, 'IPL FINALS! Watch KKR vs CSK battle it out this Sunday...'
The SMS was sent hours before the IPL qualifier in which Chennai beat Delhi to enter the final.
"Vodafone did detect this error in the IPL promotional verbiage late on Friday... The error from our end was in assuming that KKR and CSK will be playing the finals," the official spokesperson of the company said in a statement.
Vodafone said that the error was subsequently corrected. It also said the incident happened in Hyderabad and has nothing to do with any other city.
It said the mistake was due to a wrong understanding about the IPL format of qualifiers.
Typically in regular tournaments, Vodafone spokesperson said, winner of two semifinals meet each other in the final.
However, in IPL the winner of qualifier match between teams which stood first and second in the league games goes to the final, which is KKR in this case.
The second qualifier was between the teams which stood third and fourth at the end of the league stage. This was between CSK and Mumbai Indians. CSK won this match and qualified for finals.
"This was purely an inadvertent promotional campagin error that was corrected immediately upon detection," it added.
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