Quick links: NewsBiscuit Home • Chat Room • Writers' Room • Top Ten
brownpaperreporter
offlineMember
Starbucks. How very fucking gracious of you. No Corporation Tax for 3 years and then a "we've listened to our customers" paltry £20m over 2 years
If I offered HMRC an eighth of what I should send in Corporation Tax for my meagre 2 man band outfit, I'd end up in court
Coffee-making, smug, froth this up your arses you knobbing bunch of CU Next Tuesdays
It makes my Latte boil!!!
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
I'm with Margaret Hodge on this one. It's important to focus on the tax affairs of the companies that the plebs have heard of, and not ask questions about the transfer pricing policies of the ones I might have £1.8 million shares in. Certainly not. In fact if anyone so much as asks politely about them, they should be threatened with legal action.
(I don't have £1.8m shares in Stemcor, just for the record).
No matter how immoral it is, it is not illegal. Politicians are very good at jumping on a public bandwagon, yet government after government have failed to close the loopholes that are exploited.
And not wishing to defend them but £400 m of sales generates a lot of vat, income tax, national insurance, employers contribution NI, etc etc
I know it's not very leftie, but all in perspective. Jimmy Carr played the ignorance card ( highly unlikely he didn't know what was going on) and he Is forgiven because fuck it, he makes us laugh
Not defending anyone, but there is a lot of it going on. At least they are going to pay something they legally don't have to
Yikes
offlineMember
The "it might by immoral, but it is not illegal" line is, with respect, a myth that multinationals and Jimmy Carr types are happy to go along with. It conveniently masks the fact that many so called "tax avoidance" transactions are simply criminal tax evasion and fraud.
Equally, the idea that multinationals pay less tax because "loopholes" are not plugged is also a common myth - what is really involved is armies of lawyers or accountants create transactions that are of such complexity that it is hard to pin your finger on the trick, fraud, or evasion. Transfer pricing through overcooked IP costs where the IP is held in a tax haven is an example of this and is presumably what is happening with Starbucks.
A good way to illustrate the "loophole myth" is to think of someone trying to knock your house down - if they threw a small rock at one wall of your house and the whole house fell down, you could say there was a "weakness" or a "loophole". However if the person aimed a large rocket at your house (perhaps from the safety of a tax haven!) and just blasted it to the ground then it is hard to speak of any relevant "weakness" or "loophole" that was responsible for the house falling down. You could build the house 10 times stronger and it would still be destroyed by the missile.
It is correct that the UK has been slow to act by not having a GAAR (general anti-avoidance rule) unlike most other big countries. Apparentely this is now changing and that combined with coordinated G8 or G20 international action could go some way to fix the problem. And fix it they must because otherwise the only way to raise more money quickly is to hit the easy targets (again) such as pensioners, wage earners, small businesses etc etc. In other words us!
It's not a myth
A large company pays its own company in another country a royalty. That royalty is taxed at a lower rate and profit in this country is reduced therefore corp tax, which is on profit, is reduced. Buy your product from its own company in another country where the profit of that sale Is taxed at a lower rate. There is nothing in law that says you can't move your money around in this way.
With Jimmy Carr he had a company registered abroad that took all his work related payments. Nothing unusual with that. Lots people do it. But then his personal payment was a loan from that company an therefore he doesn't pay tax on it .
None of those practices are illegal, or that complicated, they are just immoral.
If you want a free market then these things will happen, but politicians want everything.
Yikes
offlineMember
If a countries transfer pricing rules say you must pay "market" to buy your product (or pay a royalty) to your overseas company, and you falsely misrepresent that you are paying "market" then that is illegal (and immoral). If to get the product or IP into the tax haven, the US company transfers it at under market and say evades US tax then that is also illegal and immoral. If the Jimmy Carr loan is not a legally effective loan and he knows it, then that too is illegal and immoral.
Of course a US corporation can transfer their IP to a tax haven at market (and pay the right US tax). The tax haven company can then let a UK subsidiary use it's IP and pay a market price for it - in which case the UK sub will make a nice profit and pay UK tax. In this scenario, the US corporation hasn't done anything illegal or immoral - but it hasn't saved much tax either!
A US company could also do alot of development work offshore (say like Microsoft basing huge numbers of staff in Ireland). If new products and IP is developed there, there is nothing wrong with alot of the profits ending up there at lower corporate tax rates - just the global free market as you say. But Starbucks will struggle to do this because the coffee would get cold when delivered from Ireland to England :)
KPMG's "legal tax avoidance" in the US didn't look so clever when they were prosecuted and incurred huge fines and took a global credibility hit. Trying the "immoral but not illegal" line didn't help them. Nor does it help many others when the veneer of a clever tax avoidance scheme is peeled away, the fraud or lie is revealed, and everything unravells.
If this sort of thing is combatted, then tax rates can be slashed and George Osborne won't have to tap up the usual captive targets (ie us) at the next election.
Plan B could be for the governement to spend less on rubbish - could be some merit in this plan!
Yikes
offlineMember
Well yes dvo the problem is pretty unsolvable - read a nice quote today from retired Aussie lawyer Chester Porter about the ease of duping the public:
"Someone once said to me in my early days at the bar, 'It is no use trying to protect the public. If you tie their hands they will hand the money over with their toes.' Unfortunately, there is some truth in this."
Sinnick
offlineMember
I understand one of these companies (Starbucks ?) has a holding company in Luxembourg, so profits are transferred via IP to that country. Luxembourg tax rate is 10%, and is a member of the EU, so it's a cheap place to register profits. I believe Switzerland is also 10%, though not in the EU.
Assuming numerous companies have similar arrangements, much of the money earned here (and France, Germany, Spain, etc) ends up banked and taxed in this handful of countries. So WTF do these banks & governments do with our money ? It doesn't just sit there gathering dust, and the infrastructure there is good but not at an intergalactic level of quality.
I posted this previously, but it might be worth repeating - take a look at the figures in this (large) download that lists assets/liabilities for most of the world's countries, and note the Cayman Islands (for example)
http://www.bis.org/statistics/provbstats.pdf#page=7
Perhaps the solution is to do something about these tax havens - invasion, perhaps, would solve many of the world's financial woes.
"If a countries transfer pricing rules say you must pay "market" to buy your product (or pay a royalty) to your overseas company, and you falsely misrepresent that you are paying "market" then that is illegal (and immoral). "
The word 'if' is important. However, I am sure Starbucks are not misrepresenting that royalty. The wil be paying whatever they declare they are paying.
If the Jimmy Carr loan is not a legally effective loan and he knows it, then that too is illegal and immoral.
Again 'if'. The Loan was no doubt effective in the country it is signed. Of that loan says he will pay 0% interest and £1 back a year then That fine.
We have to be careful about what is illegal and what is happening.
There is not much difference between the way they move money and account for things, than what some small businesses and some self employed people do. Trying to claim what they can as legitimate expenses, and maybe stretching that to the limit. They may be able to claim a meal an expensive meal as a business expense, despite the fact it was with the wife. if you clamped down on this, you would get back more than £10m a year from a coffee company. But that would be to horrible on the small business trying to earn ' an honest living'
If any of what is reported was illegal there would be legal action called for by all the papers. Anything to take away from Leveson! You would also have CEO up for perjury as they would have been lying in parliament .
Sinnick. The issue with tax havens is what another countries tax rates are are not anyone else's problem.
If a country told the uk not allow companies operate because of benefits of being in the uk because that country loses out, the public wouldn't say 'ok that's fair enough, so why should the tax havens?
dvo4fun
offlineMember
I had the honour of sitting next to a former Bank of England chappy at a wedding meal a years or so ago. He was clearly very interesting for all our conversation was about him & what he had done/was doing, without our ever once needing to resort to discussing me and my life.
In his retirement it seemd that, quite by chance, he had secured a contract with a small tax-haven thingy country. Whenever it was a bit chilly here he jetted out to the sunshine to check that the money pipeline wasn't getting clogged up with low denomination notes.
He was spared from being impaled on the end of my pastry fork by the observation that without tax haven status the inhabitants of the country would starve. Not sure if that in itself would be a reason to continue the arrangement, for I doubt if the local peasantry received much above subsistance wages.
But it gave me cause to pause until after the coffee & mints had been served by when the moment had passed and he had moved on to bore someone else rigid.
How much is this therapy costing by the way?
beau-jolly
offlineMember
In a previous life I did some consulting for the Hemway group. Trevor Hemmings started as a humble brickie. He now lives on the Isle of Man. Each of the subsiduary companies pays a hefty management fee to Hemway Group irrespective of whether they make a profit or not. Often the fee means they make a loss. At the time the group owned Pontins, Brannagans and Mood nightclub chains, 500 tennanted pubs, a company that supplied carpets to the pubs, another company that rented slot machines, at least a dozen seaside piers, 22 race courses, and Blackpool tower. I'm pretty certain that few of these companies paid any corporation tax. Hemway Group would pay Isle of Man tax though. As TH had a chain of race horses I wonder if racing losses are tax deductable. The winnings would be tax free of course. He also owns most of Blackpool front which is why it is a shit hole - the plan was to knock it all down and build super-casinos.
Sorry, what was my point? Oh yes, this was bloody ages ago. It's not a new thing.
Also...on the wireless last night, someone saying £10m is cheap for a Starbucks loyalty advertising program.
Sinnick
offlineMember
I'm trying to look at this holistically, and obviously I know countries cannot interfere with each other.
Much of the money earned in the UK (etc) ends up in these tax havens, in the hands of a very very small number of people, who mainly visit once a year. Most of the locals in these places used to be very poor, and are not much better off with the banks & affluent on their shores - I've seen several places like this, and the poor always remain poor.
Despite this, the average Cayman islander has a 30% higher GDP/capita than the average Brit, despite living on a pile of sand.
I really think that unless the working countries of the world get a grip on tax havens, this recession will continue indefinitely, with a very small number of people being quite immune.
I still think invasion some of them would be a good idea. Half-joking.
beau-jolly
offlineMember
@Sinnick: I had a brief look at the figures. Am I reading it correctly. The UK economy appears to be about 40% bigger than the USA?
Also; what happens to the money? If a rich bastard accumulates loads of money is it just a way of "keeping the score" or is that money working in any useful way?
Sinnick
offlineMember
I don't know the precise definitons of the numbers, just that countries such as Caymans, Luxembourg, Bermuda, etc do sweet FA, but have very big numbers in this file and other references such as their Wiki entry.
I think the money gets re-used by the banks to do whatever they wish, such as supporting investments they favour. They obviously have a liability to their depositors, but the period for this to be returned will be determined by the type of investment. Nice position to be in.
I can't imagine what countries such as Luxembourg do with all this wonderful tax income.
beau-jolly
offlineMember
Once again looking at the figures they appear to be the foreign currency dealings of banks based on where the bank operates from. UK banks appear to be responsible for about 25% of all trade with net assets of about $32bn. Cayman Islands is big but appears to show net liabilities of $40bn. Long time since I did big sums though.
The answer therefore is not to invade the Caymans but to privatise the City.
Ironduke
offlineMember
I wonder is Corporation Tax really ethical?
We tax business owners for providing a service and employing people (people who then pay income tax and NI,contributing to the state; whereas otherwise they would be a cost to the state in benefits. Goods/services produced in vast majority of cases contribute VAT.
In short, isn't corporation tax rather like plucking some feathers from the golden geese, without whose golden eggs we'd all be well and truly fucked?
beau-jolly
offlineMember
I'm with ID on that one. With Income Tax, NI, (Plus employers NI at an extra 13%)then VAT and Corporation tax, if you spend what you have left on booze, fags and petrol (oh and council tax!) almost all your initial gross income has gone in tax. I'm sure I worked out once that you could pay more than 100% tax if you tried hard enough.
You must log in to post.
