Congratulations to Vodafone for making an effective defence of it’s tax affairs. It raises the question of how much tax is enough tax for some people?

The telecoms group’s corporation tax bill last year was zero on UK profits of £294m but it sought to highlight its investment in infrastructure and its £338m bill for other taxes such as VAT and stamp duty.

The details were revealed as part of a new section of Vodafone’s annual report, published on Friday, designed to counter widespread criticism of its tax affairs.

As well as direct taxes, Vodafone said it paid £21m to the Exchequer in non-tax charges such as licensing fees, £523m in indirect taxes such as national insurance

That indirect tax figure bears some breaking down, for example, to ensure employee NI is excluded, but then again if they do spend 8.1bn on employing staff then actually half a billion seems low for employers NI which can be as high as 13%.