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Member (Idle past 96 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Corporate Tax Evasion | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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petrophysiics1 writes: Ok, so Starbucks doesn't think it can charge 2.30 without losing business and more importantly without making less money. Charge more sell less, charge less sell more. Somewhere there is a price which brings in the maximum amount of money. I am quite confident that Starbucks has looked at that and came up with a price arround 2.10. Now if you increase Starbucks cost of doing business they will make less money, less return on investment. If they can raise the price and do the same volumne they will do that. That is highly unlikely as if that were so the price would be higher right now. You've forgotten competition. Starbucks has Costa Coffee next door to it. Costa is a UK company paying UK taxes. Let's assume that both Starbucks and Costa charge 2.10 for a coffee and that Starbuck's cost of doing business is only lower that Costa because they don't pay as much tax. If they both now pay the same tax, Starbucks will not increase it's price unless it believes Costa will follow - but Costa has no reason to follow because it's profitable at the old price and senses blood......and so on. But if prices rise, I don't give a hoot anyway - I'd rather they paid their fair share than have bad coffee 20p cheaper. ABE And in breaking news, Starbucks goes a little bit soppy.
Coffee chain Starbucks has agreed to pay more UK corporation tax, after a public outcry over how little it pays. Kris Engskov, managing director of Starbucks UK, announced that the company would pay "a significant amount of tax during 2013 and 2014 regardless of whether the company is profitable during these years". The extra tax could amount to 20m over the next two years, he said. "We know we are not perfect", the boss of the coffee chain added. The company admitted that the degree of anger and emotion surrounding the tax issue had "taken us a bit by surprise" and that the move was an attempt to rebuild trust with its customers. "Since we started doing business here, we have always organised our tax affairs according to the letter of the law," said Mr Engskov. But he maintained that the company had found it difficult to make profits in the UK, which has "the most competitive espresso market in the world", despite "two million customers visiting us each week in hundreds of stores across the UK". Companies pay corporation tax on any profit they make in the UK, not their revenue or takings. Hence allegations that multinationals move money to other countries to reduce how much tax they pay in the UK. The extra tax payments will be funded by not claiming "tax deductions for royalties or payments related to our intercompany charges", Mr Engskov said. Starbucks has 760 outlets across the UK and says it contributes "300m to the UK economy" each year. Edited by Tangle, : News updateLife, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Straggler Member (Idle past 96 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Starbucks have now rather randomly decided that 10 million pounds for each of the next two years is what they will pay in tax.
Quite how they arrive at this figure is a bit of a mystery....
Link writes: The decision by Starbucks to voluntarily pay 10m in taxes in each of the next two years has come under fire from critics who say the move makes a mockery of the tax system, while the tax authorities reaffirmed that corporation tax was not voluntary. Prem Sikka, professor of accountancy at Essex University, criticised "private sweetheart deals" with HMRC, saying this would send a bad signal to other businesses. On Starbucks, he said it was important to know to which part of the past years the 10m figure relates. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday: "The last four years they declared a loss of about 145m, so are they saying this 10m relates to the past four years? "It is a practice of HRMC also to charge interest and penalties for late payments. How exactly is this 10m arrived at? We have absolutely no idea and really Starbucks should publish all its tax correspondence and the tax computation so we can all see." Sikka said it should be a standard requirement for all multinationals to allow the public to see their contributions to the public purse. "We should really get them to publish a table which shows the jurisdictions they are operating from. What their sales are, the costs are, their employees are, and the taxes they are paying in each country. So if we find a company that is booking about $16bn of tax revenue in Ireland with only 80 staff, we should be highly suspicious. We haven't really reformed anything about corporate accountability." Link
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
They're just proving what we all know; for multinational corporations, paying tax is voluntary.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Straggler Member (Idle past 96 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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I have decided that my own personal tax liability next year will be 10% of my income.
And the HRMC should consider themselves lucky to get it. (**BABBBUUUUMMMPPFFF**) That was the sound of the tax authorities coming down on me like a tonne of bricks......
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4046 Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Indeed. I've decided that 100% of my income was gained in Somalia, so I don't need to pay any taxes. In fact, my residency in the US has been a net loss for the year. It's unfortunate that the IRS disagrees.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus "...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds ofvariously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2326 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
Straggler writes:
Well fuck me, that means less money for us! Damned Brits! Starbucks have now rather randomly decided that 10 million pounds for each of the next two years is what they will pay in tax. In any case, couldn't this particular case be solved by a European wide tax? Let's call it Unitytax, that has a nice ring to it.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3
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[I think this video fits the theme of this thread]
link description writes: Published on Dec 5, 2012Tax the rich: An animated fairy tale, is narrated by Ed Asner, with animation by Mike Konopacki. Written and directed by Fred Glass for the California Federation of Teachers. An 8 minute video about how we arrived at this moment of poorly funded public services and widening economic inequality. Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore. They tell the people that there is no alternative, but the people aren't so sure. This land bears a startling resemblance to our land. Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity |
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Straggler Member (Idle past 96 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Hunty writes: In any case, couldn't this particular case be solved by a European wide tax? Let's call it Unitytax, that has a nice ring to it. You do realise that any sentence with the words "unity" and "European" in it currently results in large swathes of the UK political class turning into goggle-eyed-frothing-mouthed lunatics? Increased UK political and financial integration with Europe is currently as likely as Google declaring that it's workforce of Leprechauns have invented a tax deductible time-machine.
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Huntard Member (Idle past 2326 days) Posts: 2870 From: Limburg, The Netherlands Joined: |
Straggler writes:
Yes, unfortunately. But really, what alternative do we (or, for that matter, they) have? Do we want a strong unified Europe, or a weak conglomeration of nation states that are still squabling amongst eachother over every little wishywashy thing they don't like?
You do realise that any sentence with the words "unity" and "European" in it currently results in large swathes of the UK political class turning into goggle-eyed-frothing-mouthed lunatics? Increased UK political and financial integration with Europe is currently as likely as Google declaring that it's workforce of Leprechauns have invented a tax deductible time-machine.
Reality will catch up to them, The rest of Europe will make it a necessity. You guys need The Union, and The Union would be strengthened by your inclusion, rising ever higher, and claiming its rightful place in the world. And then we can take on those moneygrabbin' bandits!
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Straggler Member (Idle past 96 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
Hunty writes: But really, what alternative do we (or, for that matter, they) have? The answer they would give - As I understand it - Is a powerful economic trading block that doesn't include a single currency or distant, bureaucratic and undemocratic governance.
Hunty writes: Do we want a strong unified Europe, or a weak conglomeration of nation states that are still squabling amongst eachother over every little wishywashy thing they don't like? Is that realistic given the cultural differences? Can we all learn to be German.....?
Hunty writes: Reality will catch up to them, The rest of Europe will make it a necessity. You guys need The Union, and The Union would be strengthened by your inclusion, rising ever higher, and claiming its rightful place in the world. A lot of anti-Europeans see Europe as a whole on the way down in world terms. I think the US right-wingers see it in the same way. Over-indulged, uncompetetive and in no position to cope with the realities of the emerging powers (China, Brazil, India) etc. taking a larger slice of the pie in a way that means lower standards of living for Europeans.
Hunty writes: And then we can take on those moneygrabbin' bandits! I certainly think greater international co-operation is the way to tackle these multi-nationals.
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