Google Ordered Back To UK Parliament To "Explain Itself" Following Investigation 176
DavidGilbert99 writes "Last November Matt Brittin, Google's European chief gave a pretty convincing account of himself as he tried to explain why Google wasn't paying more tax in the UK. All the sales staff were based in Ireland apparently and the UK-based staff were there just to promote the platform for advertisers. Great. Nothing to see here. Move on please. Well, actually there is a little more to the story, as an investigation by Reuters has discovered. There are many sales staff in the UK with titles and responsibilities curiously close to what most people would call sales staff and as a result Mr. Brittin will once again have to face Margaret Hodge and the PAC to explain just what is happening."
Googled it? (Score:2, Insightful)
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oh hey guys! look! it's a troll!
if I worked for google why the hell would I be posting here?
I interviewed for Google in Ireland (Score:2, Interesting)
I did a couple of interviews for Google in Ireland, yet all my interviewing was through the UK... 0.o
Why explain himself? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does this guy get to explain himself? In my country, the IRS just sends me a letter about me misbehaving, and says I've got 30 days to pony up the cash.
Why the flying duck does a company then gets to make apologies, when it's obvious by now that they're cheating?
Re:Why explain himself? (Score:5, Informative)
"Explain himself" is british english for "to face a bollocking".
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Also, there's nothing really to explain here. Nobody is claiming the law has been broken or tax was mispaid. Hodge is just an idiot who wants to spend more money to make herself more popular and is holding "show trials" of companies who she believes somehow are too good at taking deductions. This is hilarious because she herself has a stake in a large company that uses exactly the same tax strategies.
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Actually, if sales staff are based in the UK, then sales are being made in the UK, and profits are being made in the UK, so tax is being miss paid. That's the issue.
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Re:Why explain himself? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not how the law is written. The money that is being charged for the ads are paid to the Irish subsidiary. Therefore Irish taxes apply. There's no legal definition for what it means to "make a sale" in that regard and the location of the first person you talk to on the phone makes no difference. Otherwise if you call up a company and your purchase is handled by an Indian call center, is the sale suddenly taxable in India now even if you're a Brit and pay a British company? No, that's not how tax works.
If someone thought the law was actually being broken, then the right thing to do is for HMRC to prosecute. Not summon random executives to "explain themselves" to Parliament. That's a waste of time that is guaranteed to achieve nothing.
Re:Why explain himself? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how the law is written. The money that is being charged for the ads are paid to the Irish subsidiary. Therefore Irish taxes apply. There's no legal definition for what it means to "make a sale" in that regard and the location of the first person you talk to on the phone makes no difference. Otherwise if you call up a company and your purchase is handled by an Indian call center, is the sale suddenly taxable in India now even if you're a Brit and pay a British company? No, that's not how tax works.
If someone thought the law was actually being broken, then the right thing to do is for HMRC to prosecute. Not summon random executives to "explain themselves" to Parliament. That's a waste of time that is guaranteed to achieve nothing.
I thought the whole point was for the Parliament to understand what is happening, and use that to consider adjustments to tax laws to address some of the current weaknesses that allows extreme (but today legal) tax avoidance. That is not a matter for HMRC, that is what the Parliament should be doing.
Re:Why explain himself? (Score:5, Insightful)
These parliamentary committees exist to investigate issues in society. They have the option of summoning individuals or representatives of corporations to get to the bottom of those issues. If those individuals lie to them (as Google did in this case) then they have the right to recall them and question them hard about that.
Saying it's a waste of time and is guaranteed to achieve nothing is absurd, how the fuck do you think policy gets made if politicians aren't allowed to call in relevant people to explain how things work and to see if they can provide any justification for their position if they lie, or are perceived to be on the wrong side of public opinion?
The whole reason this committee has been pursuing these lines of questioning is to see whether the law needs to change precisely so HMRC can prosecute, but when companies like Google and Amazon come to the committee and either lie, or fail to answer simple questions, then it's not really surprising the committees push them a bit harder for justification is it? The point being that if even after all these chances, even after all this deep questioning they can't provide reasonable answers to questions such as "Why is your corporation tax payment so low, when you make so much profit here?" then yes, the law is going to change, and yes, if they persist after that, they will be prosecuted. The law can't change in an effective way however if MPs don't understand the problem in depth to make sure the changes work, and are relevant.
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Because I don't believe MPs are really in need of random company executives to teach them how their own laws work? And this is random - lots of companies sell into the UK, have offices there, and book profits in some other, including one that Hodge is herself involved with. So how are these people picked ... well, by how well known their brands are. So Hodge can look tough in the tabloids. I am struggling to see what other rationale there could be.
I agree that they need to learn about the issues in order to
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But obviously the laws aren't working are they? That's precisely the point - the vast majority of the public and MPs do not believe the law was ever intended to be such that companies could avoid paying corporation tax in the ways they do so the whole point in the committee is to find out why the law is not working as it was intended to so they can see if there is actually a real problem, and hence whether new laws are needed or the law needs to change, or whether companies are in fact not paying as much ta
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The fact that Google went to lengths to say the sales were negotiated and finalized in Ireland, and that UK Googlers were just there to provide marketing 'support', undermines your assertion.
Because in fact, the UK employees have titles like "Sales manager", and publicly describe their roles as negotiating sales, making sales, closing deals.
If that is true, then the sales occur in the UK, regardless of the fact to whom the invoice payment was addressed.
Google is being asked to explain the discrepancy
Re:Why explain himself? (Score:4, Informative)
A false smear from an AC, repeating the tax cheats excuses.
Margaret Hodge owns shares in Stemcor. Stemcor's effective tax rate over the last 5 years was 32%. Google's effective tax rate was 8%. Google's UK effective tax rate was 0.4%.
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It is quite possible that they made a considerable loss in previous years and had offset this loss against future profits. I'm not going to dig through their accounts to see if this is the case, I'm just saying that the amount of tax paid in a given financial period doesn't tell the whole story.
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How is that a smear? Stemcor paid £157k in tax on revenue of £2.1 billion. Given that corporate tax in the UK is 24% on profits, this means that Stemcor made a profit of £654k. A £654,000 profit on top of £2.1 billion in revenue is laughable and utterly unbelievable.
Stemcore in the movie business? To hear the Hollywood studios talk, they haven't made a dime in profits in over a hundred years.
Re:Why explain himself? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stemcor trades steel. Big old fashioned, heavy to transport, unglamorous steel. In a country where British Steel made losses for decades. And 2011 was in the depths of a recession. Just how much profit do you think they should have made? It's admirable that they made any.
Note that the Telegraph article that you are probably referencing, directly or indirectly says: "However. it is not known whether the company â" which made profits of £65m â" used similar controversial tax avoidance measures criticised in the past by Mrs Hodge."
If it's "not known", and based purely on looking at revenue rather than profit, then it is indeed a smear.
Google on the other hand IS KNOWN to use tax avoidance, and we KNOW they made huge profits on which they paid very little tax, cheating people in countries all over the world.
Did you forget about Apple (Score:2)
Google on the other hand IS KNOWN to use tax avoidance
Apple on the other hand IS KNOWN to use tax avoidance, and we KNOW they made huge profits on which they paid very little tax, cheating people in countries all over the world.
Here is a quote from the Guardian "Apple is estimated to have avoided more than £550m in tax in Britain in 2011. Its latest accounts show UK turnover at just over £1bn and profit at £81.3m, generating a tax bill of £14.4m." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9829894/Apple-s [telegraph.co.uk]
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you little liar :) (Score:2)
Apple UK had revenue of £1B, and a profit of £81.3M
Apple is famous for their .813 Profit Margins *rolls eyes*
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I confess I do not understand what you're complaining about? I do not know how much profit they should have made, but if you're saying that they made £65m profit and they paid only £157k tax, that's an effective tax rate of 0.24%.
This does not condone Apple/Google/etc and the schemes they run. If Google are breaking the law, throw the book at them. If they are not, leave them alone. If you don't like the amount of tax they're paying, change the law. Absolutely no one be they individuals or corpo
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I do not know how much profit they should have made, but if you're saying that they made £65m profit and they paid only £157k tax
I'm not saying any such thing. The Telegraph is.
Absolutely no one be they individuals or corporations will pay more tax than is legally required.
That's disingenuous. Corporations such as Google play all the countries and their tax systems off against each other, to dishonestly avoid paying tax. The ordinary person can't do that. Ordinary people should not be paying more tax than rich corporations, it's stupid and immoral.
One person's tax avoidance ... (Score:2)
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No one's saying it is illegal. Plenty of antisocial and even evil things are not illegal. But they are still cheating the people in every country that they do this deceitful practice.
Should be doing? That says more about you than it does about Google.
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This isn't the HMRC, this is a special parlimentary committee who are trying to work out how the companies are legally avoiding tax.
The companies questioned (Google, Amazon, Starbucks + 1 other I can't remember off the top of my head - probably MS) were all choosen because they pay very little tax in relation to the turnover the companies are reporting in the UK, and are therefore either very badly run or are engag
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"The Google executive is being brought back because it's now been shown that most of the Google operations are based in London, not Dublin and he was therefore telling porkies."
Google claim that their UK operations are in marketing and advertising, sales are negotiated and finalised in Dublin. So far no conclusive evidence has been found that Google UK staff are negotiating and finalising sales.
The PAC are just trying to distract attention away from the fact that the tax laws that are being explioted
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OK, it's not 100% proof, but it is certainly enough to ask whether Google were truthful last time around.
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It is not a trial. It is an investigation on how the laws need to be updated to make the currently legal, but nevertheless unintended and undesirable, tax avoidance schemes illegal.
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The best bit is the court in that case is actually parliament itself; you would be called before the bar of the house. Although they haven't actually fined anyone since the C17th.
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And yet lying in parliament is perfectly legal.
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For the same reason newspapers get to "reject" the implementation of the Leveson enquiry.
Companies rule the government, apparently for corporations, the law is optional and something they get to decide whether they opt in to or not.
Meanwhile it's just forced on the rest of us which is a shame, because I'd also quite like to "reject" the digital economy act and RIPA just like the papers say they're rejecting legislation against their decades of abuse and illegal intrusion into people's private lives.
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Because in this case the large companies aren't actually doing anything illegal. In most cases they are using a very detailed understanding of the law to stay within the letter of it, if not the intent.
Much as I dislike the way Google, Apple, Microsoft et al operate in this regard, it is up to the legislature to create their laws precisely and carefully - and in this case clearly the tax laws need to be amended.
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Much as I dislike the way Google, Apple, Microsoft et al operate in this regard, it is up to the legislature to create their laws precisely and carefully - and in this case clearly the tax laws need to be amended.
You don't think the corporations bought the law just like they did in the US?
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Exactly, and that's what makes me sick.
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Why does this guy get to explain himself? In my country, the IRS just sends me a letter about me misbehaving, and says I've got 30 days to pony up the cash.
Why the flying duck does a company then gets to make apologies, when it's obvious by now that they're cheating?
Because that is if you break the law. Google are not breaking any laws here, they are just making sure they pay as little tax as legally possible.
Big international companies always have the ability to declare their profits in whatever country they see fit by rigging the rates that the parent companies charge for use of the brand name, this is perfectly legal, if the government want to stop this they can try changing the law. Even if you changed this law though it would be tremendously hard to prove if the f
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Time to start taxing revenue instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporation Tax is, of course, only levied on the profits disclosed by the company's annual return. So only profitable companies have to pay 23% of their net as tax.
But this encourages the Big Boys to simply shift their profit to other, overseas, divisions, through 'franchise payments' and other mechanisms.
Perhaps it's time to say that any company making over 1 million in annual revenue will pay, say, 5% on its revenue above that level. No discussion of profits. It is much easier to determine how much money a company took-in. What money landed in its UK bank accounts is what is taxed.
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That would help defeat companies like Starbucks, but it would have no effect on google or amazon. They'd simply move the bank account that's paid into to ireland. Of course what would potentially work would be to put the tax on money paid by people in the UK, to the company, no matter where that money goes to.
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Not sure I agree this is the same with Amazon. Amazon do, at least, have to have warehousing in the UK. Claiming it's a foreign transaction when you pay in U
VAT does not work like that. (Score:4, Informative)
We have a tax like that already - VAT
VAT does not work like that. VAT is paid by the Final Customer, The businesses in between don't pay. What you may be getting confused over is the HMRC *collect* the net of incoming VAT and outgoing VAT until it is finally paid in full by the final customer. Businesses essentially pay nothing.
There is a nice explanation and example at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax [wikipedia.org]
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VAT is paid by the Final Customer, ... at the point of purchase, which in Amazon's case is an offshore subsidiary with lower tax. So basically they get to sell goods nearly tax free to UK residents where as local retailers have to pay full tax.
They pull the same trick in the US with sales tax too and it looks like congress are finally fed up enough (i.e. other retailers have lobbied enough) to close that loophole.
Books should be VAT free. (Score:2)
VAT is paid by the Final Customer, ... at the point of purchase, which in Amazon's case is an offshore subsidiary with lower tax. So basically they get to sell goods nearly tax free to UK residents where as local retailers have to pay full tax.
That is nothing to do with Amazon. In the UK books rightfully are vat free, but ebooks aren't. That is just wrong. The fact that throughout the EU ebooks are inconsistent...and Amazon take advantage of the fact is just an aside.
James Bridle "Ebooks are not exempt from VAT, being classed as, I believe, ‘electronic guides’ rather than ‘books’"
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That is nothing to do with Amazon. In the UK books rightfully are vat free, but ebooks aren't.
Well, good job amazon only sells books, then.
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That is nothing to do with Amazon. In the UK books rightfully are vat free, but ebooks aren't.
Depends what you mean by "rightfully". The VAT laws are incredibly inconsistent and arbitrary in the UK.
VAT was originally _supposed_ to only apply to "luxury goods", which is why cakes (which are presumably a bare essential) are tax free whilst sanitary towels, incontenance pads, etc (which are clearly luxury items) are taxable.
Similarly, a flapjack (i.e. a bar made out of cerial, fat and sugar) is VAT free whilst a cerial bar (which is, instead, made out of cerial, fat and sugar) is taxable.
So as you can
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VAT was originally _supposed_ to only apply to "luxury goods"
Oh, and I should add that keeping yourself from freezing to death and being able to get to work are also luxuries, as fuel has VAT charged on it. I'm not sure what happens if you decide to chuck VAT-free cakes on the fire and use them as fuel...
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It's even worse than that. Cakes are VAT free.
Biscuits (cookies in US parlance) are VAT free unless they are covered in chocolate. If they're covered in chocolate, they're a luxury item and therefore VAT'able.
Jaffa Cakes are small cakes. So small, in fact, that they are the shape and size of a biscuit. They're covered in chocolate and sold in packs of about 20-odd in the same aisle as the biscuits for about the same price. They're not VAT-able because they are classed as a cake.
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VAT is paid by the Final Customer, ... at the point of purchase, which in Amazon's case is an offshore subsidiary with lower tax. So basically they get to sell goods nearly tax free to UK residents where as local retailers have to pay full tax.
They pull the same trick in the US with sales tax too and it looks like congress are finally fed up enough (i.e. other retailers have lobbied enough) to close that loophole.
Amazon actually wants to start forcing sales tax to be charged to online purchases. They're a huge corporation now, which can easily handle keeping a database of tax rates for all cities, states, and counties. Online sales tax hurts the small companies, not the large ones. It will force more small companies to switch to Amazon marketplace, or to pay Amazon and other large corporations for sales tax information. It does not hurt Amazon in any way, shape or form. Remember that you pay the sales tax, not
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They already tax revenue. its called VAT, and for every £100 of takings, 16.6p is sent to the govenment.
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I meant £16.66 ! lol
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Which probably Google isn't paying either. This is because most people buying services from Google are VAT registered businesses, and the entity processing the sale is based in Ireland. Under EU VAT rules, the place of supply is based in the UK (where the customer is located), so the whole transaction is under the reverse charge and hence no VAT is charged either in the UK or in Ireland.
Of course, the idea is that the VAT is charged when the business sells the product to the end-user, which is probably in t
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Which probably Google isn't paying either. This is because most people buying services from Google are VAT registered businesses
Note – this means that google is paying it, they're just probably also claiming a proportion of it back when they purchase items from other companies.
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Under EU tax rules, if the supplier is in a different EU country than the customer, and both are VAT registered in their respective countries, then the supplier does not pay or claim for VAT. This is called the reverse charge.
It was clearly explained in my post. I don't know how you missed that.
The only reason they would pay VAT would be if Google's Irish subsidiary registered for VAT in the UK as well as in Ireland. But why would you want to do that when you could keep all that revenue away from HMRC by no
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There is somebody who didn't know what VAT is? Not a criticism, just an expression of abject amazement.
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Did it change? Last time I looked it was 20%. Or are you averaging with non-VATable items?
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I'm so glad I don't get involved in the sharp end of selling things.
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Unless they're e-Books, because it's worded in such a way that it refer exclusively to printed works, which is annoying.
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Talking about just the sales tax angle, that's exactly the same issue faced in British Columbia with PST due to it being a cascading tax. The major businesses are all vertically integrated to avoid paying PST on supplies again and again. This was eventually replaced by the HST, which is a tax combining the federal GST with the provincial PST, but is a value-added tax as opposed to a cascading tax.
Interestingly enough, the voters rejected the fairer HST last year and opted to return to the PST because people
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So basically, you want to outright kill every single big company that has a net profit margin of less than 5%?
Re:Time to start taxing revenue instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
For an example is how prevalent this practice is, look at how Pepsico structure it's operations in the UK. They sells crisps (ie. potato chips) in the UK under the Walkers brand. There was an article no long ago in one of the major newspapers that described how they are able to effective transfer all the profits away from the UK part of the business to avoid paying tax. They did it by assigning all the potatoes that goes into the making of the crisps to be owned under the Swiss subsidiary. These are processed and made into crisps in the UK owned plants, which makes almost no profit in its operations. The finished product, still owned by the Swiss subsidiary is sold, and all the profits make are accounted for under the Swiss operation.
The problem with is that in the EU, we have the free movement of goods through economic union, but there is not overriding political union to plug the loop holes. This needs to be addressed somehow, or otherwise, we are just subsidising Switzerland, Luxembourg and Ireland through tax loopholes.
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The problem with is that in the EU, we have the free movement of goods through economic union, but there is not overriding political union to plug the loop holes. This needs to be addressed somehow, or otherwise, we are just subsidising Switzerland, Luxembourg and Ireland through tax loopholes.
Subsidizing countries with relatively low tax burdens sounds far preferable to overriding political unions. So I'd have to disagree on the "need" for such things. As I see it, competition at the country level helps curb government abuses.
I think this is classic free lunch thinking. You want a free lunch from Pepsi. Pepsi moves their lunch to Switzerland where they are treated better. Lunch is no longer free. Something must be done. But the obvious solution is not "clean up my act so that Pepsi will come
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That doesn't work very well in practise. Luxembourg can take a tiny amount of money from lots of essentially foreign businesses to subsidise their 500,000 residents. With over 100 times the population, Germany, the UK or France simply need much more money to pay for infrastructure.
I've been to Luxembourg. It's tiny, about 70km from top to bottom. The whole country is perfectly maintained, like the very nicest areas in London (like Knightsbridge, where a house costs £10M). There's perfect paving,
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That doesn't work very well in practise.
For you. It works quite well for others.
And if it's so easy to avoid paying those taxes, maybe the UK should tax things that aren't easy to avoid? This seems a lot like using the legal system in the US to enforce *IAA business models.
If both Luxembourg and the UK had similar tax rates, Luxembourg would tax actual companies there (not that many, for 0.5M people) and the UK would tax companies based here (somewhat more, for 68M people).
And why would that be a good idea? As I see it, all that wealth still remains in the EU and the UK gets a portion of it through both taxes from employees in the UK as well as trade with Luxemborg and the corporations that declare profits there.
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Maybe because it violate the basic tenants fair play? There is a reason for tax and a large part of it is to pay for the upkeep of the physical *and* social infrastructure in a country. What you are advocating is that we should let differences between the tax regimes be taken care of solely by market forces, and by extension the rapid downsizing of the state in a race to the bottom.
I guess if you sold it *that* way, it doesn't look half as attractive does it?
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Maybe because it violate the basic tenants fair play?
And what is that for a multinational corporation? Keep in mind that the real problem is that you want more money out of these sorts of businesses from a particular, obsolete taxation scheme (here, the VAT). Rather than fix the tax or replace with something that works better, you propose to widen the area of its effect via a kludge, a broader government.
What you are advocating is that we should let differences between the tax regimes be taken care of solely by market forces, and by extension the rapid downsizing of the state in a race to the bottom.
That's how it worked in the past, right? And yet we somehow still have governments. Having a monopoly on force in a location is a very powerful and lucrativ
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You and I are talking about different things. The issue with PepsiCo is not based on VAT, but corporation tax on the profits. The VAT still has to be charged (and remains in the UK) as the seller of the product is the supermarket or corner store.
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Actually the EU is a very very loose political union that was developed after the economic framework was developed - originally the European Economic Community which you may know as the "Common Market". The EU is the result of the economic cooperation - it was determined that there needs to be some political structure in order to co-ordinate the common market. What you are seeing in the past 5 years the result of too much economic integration without the requisite fiscal integration (which is highly politic
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The factory is on UK land and run by UK staff, supplied by UK roads, powerlines, water and gas pipes.
And they pay a lot in taxes and user fees. If that's not enough, then maybe those should be increased rather than trying a value-added tax (VAT), which allows Pepsi to hide its profits in a lower VAT country.
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Oh and it's the "overriding political union" that enables this "Subsidizing countries with relatively low tax" rates. If not for the EU we would tax the profits/potatos as they entered/left our borders.
Oops, I was going to comment on this as well. I think the original poster's plan was that the greater political body would appropriate some of Switzerland's taxes and transfer them to the UK in a "fair" manner. In other words, it would restore the situation that the UK originally had, but at the European level.
I think that's highly dependent on the fallacy that the resulting government would be sufficiently responsive to give a fair share of such tax revenue to the UK rather than just squander it in the
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But it isn't fair to a UK based company making crisps locally to be sold in the UK. Not everybody can afford to set up a corporate office in Switzerland or Luxembourg to avoid tax.
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So basically, you want to outright kill every single big company that has a net profit margin of less than 5%?
Companies don't get big by having a net profit margin of less than 5%
Tell that to Wal-Mart, Amazon, Glencore, etc etc
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OK, let's look at S&P 500 net profit margins by sector [businessinsider.com]. The S&P 500 comprise some pretty big companies.
Consumer discretionary -> autos and components: 4.2%
How about Consumer discretionary -> retailing: 4.0%
Food and consumer staples retailing: 2.9%
Health care equipment & services: 4.7%
Most people think net margins are gigantic. In some sectors they are substantial, up to 20% sector-wide, but in other very important sectors
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Unfortunately that fucks over a lot of companies. In fact most companies that have high overheads; we had an income of over £80m last year. Only £3m of that was profit.
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The problem is that this hurts companies that are genuinely making a loss through a genuine need for restructuring and so forth.
What really needs to happen is to reorganise the way in which profits are calculated and at what point tax occurs.
Right now, the problem is that tax is taken after every other possible deduction on revenue has been calculated. The key is to move it up the chain of importance (but not all the way up to revenue). Realistically tax should come after genuine expenditure like staff wage
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Trivially avoidable by separating companies into per-nation parts and having one part buy services from the other. With happens to be what most are already doing.
There's no obvious way to stop that without breaking cases where these companies are genuinely different entities, ie, the majority of trade.
Google's real motto (Score:3)
Tax should be paid where the buyer is (Score:2)
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"Google bribe the right people at HMRC"
If you looked at the career history of those at the top of HMRC you would see that there is no need for bribery.
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"Google bribe the right people at HMRC"
If you looked at the career history of those at the top of HMRC you would see that there is no need for bribery.
IIRC, Vodafone escaped a huge tax bill by taking one of the HMRC top dogs to dinner. Once.
Not quite 'Minimum Bribe Level: 1 Turnip', but not far off.
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A private company can not put me in prison without government help.
A Government can.
Some private companies I do not like. Most I do not have business with.
A few I am "Forced" (Meaning I am too lazy to figure out a different way) to do business with (Microsoft).
There is no competition for government.
I fear Government. There is no corporation (Even the Evil Microsoft) that I fear.
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You probably also suffer from an unfortunate tendency to view markets with blinders and therefore see large players dominating various fields at any given snapshot in time as a bad thing, but without the ability to see that such domination is still better than the alternative of unskilled bureaucratic control that is necessarily comprised of similarly flawed human beings with no real accountability to speak of in the same examined period.
By living in a democratic country you have a guaranteed slice of control on the government and therefore there is some accountability. With private entities, the accountability is only to the shareholders, which exclude most of the masses. That's in the best of cases, with a privately owned company, you don't even have access to that.
The only difference at this stage is market pressure which address the "unskilled" bit of your rant. That should allow you to get a better service in theory. Of course there
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By living in a democratic country you have a guaranteed slice of control on the government and therefore there is some accountability.
This is a fallacy. With government as large as the combined federal, state, and municipal components that make up the bureaucracy of the United States, accountability to a single person or even any particular locale is diluted to the point of being nearly inconsequential. Larger government bodies tend to do what they want, with little actual oversight or consequences for their actions in such a climate. While those bodies are comprised of individuals, the personal responsibility and accountability measures
Re:It usually works like this (Score:5, Informative)
Most bad government has grown out of too much government. - Thomas Jefferson
Whenever I see a quote like that attributed to Thomas Jefferson, I always [use a popular internet search tool] to find more often than not that it's simple right wing fantasy. Why am I not surprised, that it's fake? [monticello.org].
Here are some more things to chew on:
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Sure glad I got the constitution to protect me from people like you :-)
Thanks for the info on the quote. It's pretty clear he believed exactly what the quote says, but I'd rather not quote something that's inaccurate. Also, in the very link you provided it says the quote first arose in 1913, long before the republican party or conservatives (neither of which I belong to) were what they are today.
Here's a new quote from your link:
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain
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Funny thing about that, for the last 30 years the tax burden has been steadly shifted from corporations and the leisure class to "the people mopping floors living at the poverty line"
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Funny thing about that, for the last 30 years the tax burden has been steadly shifted from corporations and the leisure class to "the people mopping floors living at the poverty line"
Sorry, but you haven't looked at the tax rolls lately. Remember the 47% who don't pay taxes. Those are the people mopping floors. I am the one of the middle class people still paying income taxes and, in my opinion, that's why the country is going broke. Everyone who earns money should be paying their fair share to support this spendthrift government. Even if it's just $20.00 a year. Everyone who votes, should have a 'dog in the race'.
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