http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tax-haven-rife-among-uk-top-firms-094554244.html
I don’t have a great knowledge of this but it seems like Joe Public is geting well and truly stiffed by our government whjilst the top dogs get richer (not a dig at Tories, the other lot are (almost?) as bad)
Anyway – is this unfair? How do they get away with it? Comments to help enlighten me?

It’s far more sensible to blame public sector workers, unions, the poor, the left wing, in fact anyone other than the companies who make money here but don’t pay the tax they should.

Always makes me laugh hearing British politicians banging on about cracking down on tax evasion. They could put a stop to most of it in one swipe of a pen. After all, most tax havens are in British sovereign territories.

They won’t do it though. On account of being a bunch of spineless craven shithouses, completely in the pocket of vested interests. And there is no distinction on party lines. They’re all as bad as each other!

It’s the famous trickle-down in action – i.e. the wealthy elite pishing on the rest of us.

Want to fix tax evasion? Lower your tax rate.

They won’t do it though. On account of being a bunch of spineless craven shithouses

Go Binners !

It’s not quite as simple as that unfortunately. As the biggest companies are now global entities they can (and do) declare their profits where ever they see fit. If you threaten to tax them heavily they will shift some money around and will say they made no profit in the UK and we get zero tax.

I am not saying it is right but it is the way it is.

Want to fix tax evasion? Stop being spineless craven shithouses, and make them pay…

Want to fix tax evasion? Lower your tax rate.

To 0% 🙂 Then the poor could pay all the tax. Everyone wins 🙂

Well Ireland lowered it’s corporation tax to the lowest in the developed world and look where it’s got them!

I refer the right honourable gentleman to my original answer

Lunge – if that’s the reason why can’t we then chuck them out of the UK? If you pay no tax, fine **** off and you can’t trade here.
And RBS is government owned! Maybe if we threw them out for non payment HSBC might pay oop! I realise this will never happen unless we have a revolution but it’s a nice thought

Lunge – if that’s the reason why can’t we then chuck them out of the UK?

Deport people who don’t pay tax? Sounds great to me.

Are we a country or a cash cow? Are we a nation or a teat to be sucked on? Are we here to provide profits for shareholders or to make the lives of our citizens worth living?

Spineless shithouses indeed.

Don’t quite get the “weathly elite” and “fat cat” comments. Those are PLCs, so a significant part of their ownership is pension funds. Anyone here pay into a company or private pension?

It’s either make them pay, or allow us all the luxury afforded to vodaphone. To negotiate our own tax arrangements on an individual basis

Hello. Is that HMRC? Yes… I’ve decided that this month I’ll be paying 3% of my income in tax. And if it’s ok with you, I won’t be bothering with NI from now on. I’m very important to this countries economy, don’t you know….

We’ll see how that goes down eh?

Don’t quite get the “weathly elite” and “fat cat” comments

I’m just off to have a word with Dave Harnett about my taxes – I’m sure he’ll be just as accommodating with me as he is with Goldman Sachs.

Edit: as Binners says.

I blame pikeys actually

And the disabled, and the poor.

There is a better place, just over the horizon for us all. We must be strong, we must accept there will be casualties. We will emerge leaner from this process.

Vote tory

Lol at all the venting of spleens over tax evasion, yet how many times are people on here asking for advice on how to avoid import duty for buying kit abroad.

We’re just following the example of our ‘superiors’

*doffs cap*

From now on, all my earnings are going through the cayman islands and Belize

Oops. Double post

Strange times we have evolved into quite anti Darwinian.
The greatest genetic pool succeeds at the expense of reproduction and pay the taxes that support the weaker genes to reproduce and consume the taxes.
With the passage of time the stronger genes will die off and the weaker genes will dominate the earth. Who will pay the taxes then?

I just want to work & be paid. Eventually, a house and a missus and a kid would be nice.
The rich and elite can do what they like, I only care about my lot and right now “my lot” is not enough.

I’m 24.

Maybe I should try harder…

It’s a fair point you make there hugor. Perhaps you could offer a ‘final solution’?

Strange times we have evolved into quite anti Darwinian.
The greatest genetic pool succeeds at the expense of reproduction and pay the taxes that support the weaker genes to reproduce and consume the taxes.
With the passage of time the stronger genes will die off and the weaker genes will dominate the earth. Who will pay the taxes then?

Be careful what you wish for. There is always someone fitter than you.

The rich and elite can do what they like,

Thats the trouble, they have, and are, while we’ve been buzzing around like little worker bees, too distracted to see beyond our noses.

Want to fix tax evasion? Lower your tax rate.

It seems to me that its the ordinary tax payer that pays for the Health, education of it’s workforce present and future, and the security(Police) and transport infrastructure of this country. A very large percentage of the things that a business requires to be successful don’t you think? And yet they want to pay as little tax as well, placing a further burden on everyone else. It’s about time business paid its equal share as well.

Perhaps you could offer a ‘final solution’?

There is always someone fitter than you.

I don’t pretend to have the solution. I’d love to openly discuss a topic like this but the moment anyone challenges political correctness in this forum or in the community, they are immediately shut down and labelled with all kinds of attrocities.

Corporation tax is only a very small part of the overall tax take anyway; 8% in 2008 for example** – and a lot of that was from banks and other Financial Sector companies, which won’t be paying much tax at the moment.

Corporation tax is necessarily very complex, and so you can get unintended results (both favourable and unfavourable). Tax planning covers a whole spectrum from doing things that defer paying tax for a while, to arranging affairs in an efficient manner than ensures the tax result reflects the commercial reality of a transaction (which it won’t necessarily do even for relatively simple things that “should” work), through doing a transaction a bit differently to get a favourable outcome, to the point where you are arguably only doing a transaction because it gives you a good tax result (maybe exploiting the “cracks” between two sets of tax rules, either in the UK Tax system or between jurisdictions, or setting something up so it gives an asymmetrical tax treatment of a payment from one company to another). Shades of grey, certainly.

(EDIT – the difference between tax avoidance and evasion is that avoidance is legal, and involves full disclosure of what has been done and the basis in law for the treatment adopted.

Tax evasion is illegal and involves elements of concealment or deceit. No FTSE company should be doing anything close to evasion.)

Pretty much every time someone buys a CD, DVD or memory card online from the likes of Amazon they are complicit in corporate tax avoidance. A lot of companies (according to Wikipedia, Amazon, HMV online and Play.com ) base these sales in the Channel Islands so effectively sell things without paying VAT. Consumer wins, due to lower price (remember VAT is now 20%) but government doesn’t get their VAT. It’s a double whammy for government as the profits of the company set up in, say, Guernsey, won’t pay UK tax either as its operation is offshore. Kaboom.

**(see page 5 of http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf )

Ooooooooooooo – get her?!

So objecting to corporations paying their fair share of tax is now ‘political correctness gone mad’ is it?

Surely that’s only the case if said tax then goes to funding performing arts therapy centres for one-eyed black lesbians?

Lunge – if that’s the reason why can’t we then chuck them out of the UK? If you pay no tax, fine **** off and you can’t trade here

You could do that but then you loose all of the tax revenue, these companies do pay some tax, maybe not as much as we think they should but it is many £millions better than none at all.

This is why it is a fine line, the rates need to be high enough to make some money for the country but low/lax enough that a company won’t just declare elsewhere.

lunge – Member

It’s not quite as simple as that unfortunately. As the biggest companies are now global entities they can (and do) declare their profits where ever they see fit. If you threaten to tax them heavily they will shift some money around and will say they made no profit in the UK and we get zero tax.

I am not saying it is right but it is the way it is.

Teh usual excuse given but its not true.

simple answer – you tax them on what happens in the UK – so they cannot export profits. tax on turnover not profits if you want. remove the legal loopholes.

TJ, I agree they need to pay more tax but it really isn’t as simple to get it as you make out. A government has to look at how to get revenue out of a global economy not just look at our island, companies can and fo move profits around and no amount of shouting for the likes of us will stop it.

I don’t know the solution but then I am neither a tax expert or a global economist.

Back when I was studying A Level Business Studies, I learned that in terms of wealth, there were only about seventeen nations which had greater wealth than the world’s largest business. This was back in 1991, I’d hate to think about what that statistic is now.

It’s all very well to say “close legal loopholes” but ultimately, if the cost of doing business here outweighs the profits made in the UK marketplace then multi-national businesses will simply shut up shop here. And lots of people will lose their jobs.

It’s a fact, but not one I’m comfortable with. There should be a worldwide treaty forbidding tax havens (of which the UK has more than it’s fair share) or introduce a global flat rate.

However, we’ve got the wrong government in office for anything remotely fair to happen (arguably the last bunch were just as bad in this respect too), so expect middle earners and the poor to get shafted as per usual.

There must be an awful lot of loopholes. I’m sure some of them could be closed quite easily.

I read the report on News Internationals tax affairs. In one year they payed less than 1% of their profits from their British operations in tax. Which frankly is obscene!

They were funneling all the money through ‘subsidiary’ (read ‘front’) companies in the Cayman Islands, Belize etc. Apparently HMRC had been through their accounts and it was all completely legal.

That suggests to me an awful lot of loopholes exist, and are being ruthlessly exploited. Surely its not beyond the collective capacity of our legislature to close some of these to make things a bit fairer?

Should they want too, of course. And that’s the rub

Like I said…. a bunch of spineless craven shithouses, completely in the pocket of vested interests.

I don’t pretend to have the solution. I’d love to openly discuss a topic like this but the moment anyone challenges political correctness in this forum or in the community, they are immediately shut down and labelled with all kinds of attrocities.

So you post on a forum and expect an easy ride, everyone to “openly discuss” this topic and how you are right, and when it doesn’t go your way, you label it as political correctness?

The strength of your convictions are a bit like wet toilet paper.

Like I said…. a bunch of spineless craven shithouses, completely in the pocket of vested interests.

Agreed. Every government I can recall has been exactly the same and there’s next to no incentive for them to change their ways. I strongly believe that we need to vet our politicians better. Ultimately, most people have gotten to the point where we expect our politicians to be crooked and are utterly disinterested when they’re caught doing something they shouldn’t.

So you post on a forum and expect an easy ride, everyone to “openly discuss” this topic and how you are right, and when it doesn’t go your way, you label it as political correctness?

Could we label that the Tunbridge Wells defense? 😉

It’s an emotive subject, but do you really want PLCs paying more tax? What for exactly? If you say yes then also accept that you are going to be working longer for less pensions, public and private sector alike.

Whats all this “rich b4stards” nonsense about? Companies have shareholders, us.

lunge – its very simple – you stop them exporting the profits. Teh government writes the laws. if they export all the profits you tax on turnover or you sinmply tax on the profits made here.

Of course it can be done – with the political will

mcboo – Member

It’s an emotive subject, but do you really want PLCs paying more tax? What for exactly? If you say yes then also accept that you are going to be working longer for less pensions, public and private sector alike.

Really? How do you work that out? Lower income tax if PLCs pay more.

Also, employees of these massive corporations do pay tax to their country, so they’re doing us a favour by staying here really.

Apart from News International who are a bunch of spineless craven shithouses, completely in the pocket of vested interests…

…and HSBC, Vodafone, Nestle, politicians, Greggs, anyone that doesn’t sell me bike bits for cheap…