Amazon.co.uk pay ZERO tax in the UK. Why are people more annoyed about the bloke down the road maybe getting a benefit that he shouldn't than that. I don't understand.

'niceguy'-

The problem doesn't keep boiling down to the banking bailout at all.

I think a global financial crisis which has been called the biggest this century (possibly surpassing the 1929 crash) has quite a bit to do with our current economic difficulties.

We were heading for a disaster anyway. We were overspending for decades. Something was going to happen eventually. The banking crisis just brought this to the forefront and made people realise that actually...even governments cannot borrow indefinitely.

Governments weren't borrowing indefinitely, and we (the government) weren't overspending for decades. The UK national debt has been steadily decreasing over the past 50 years and is at a historical lowpoint:

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?chart=G0-total&year=1900_2011&units=p&state=UK

Anyway, the whole evil rich companies avoiding tax and nasty banks smashed our utopia has been done to death. Let me bring the subject back to the original topic.

Most people aren't so ready to dismiss the problems the banks caused, given that the public spent hundreds of billions of pounds bailing them out, and caused a global economic crisis, causing the poor and middle-classes to suffer austerity in an attempt to make up the revenue shortfall caused by the recession and debt repayments.

There's certainly a lot of unfinished business...

Based on the above, does Ttosca, Garlic et al now think a company based in Luxemburg should pay corporation tax in the UK just because it trades here? And if the answer to that is yes, does that mean UK based companies should pay corporation tax in other EU states?

Yes, absolutely. This is the problem with globalisation. We can't have a situation whereby some company trades in the UK and has access to the UK market, yet places itself offshore in a tax haven and pays 0% corporation tax. This is unacceptable.

The share of the total tax burden over the past several decades shifted away from corporations to individuals. They are paying less and less tax. Meanwhile, citizens are getting shafted with cuts in services, higher taxes, and stagnating wages.

Thanks for reporting me, whoever it was.

Luxembourg isn't just anywhere else in the world though. It's part of EU, and UK voluntarily entered into this.

Are you advocating withdrawal from the EU?

The problem doesn't keep boiling down to the banking bailout at all. We were heading for a disaster anyway. We were overspending for decades. Something was going to happen eventually. The banking crisis just brought this to the forefront and made people realise that actually...even governments cannot borrow indefinitely.

This implicit subsidy of £100 billion you 'quote'. Actually it's not a REAL subsidy is it? The author defines this as: "...comes from the expectation of a ride to the rescue? by the government." So basically you are now arguing that banks are bad because of some theoretical event which hasn't happened has cost us a theoretical £100 billion?

In actual fact APS looks like it is set to make us a tidy profit: Link

Anyway, the whole evil rich companies avoiding tax and nasty banks smashed our utopia has been done to death. Let me bring the subject back to the original topic.

Based on the above, does Ttosca, Garlic et al now think a company based in Luxemburg should pay corporation tax in the UK just because it trades here? And if the answer to that is yes, does that mean UK based companies should pay corporation tax in other EU states?

Going "It's all about high finance, which the likes of us can't possibly understand" is pathetic bollocks imo. The problem keeps on boiling down to the bloody bank bailout and the fact that UK has now handed over control to the banking industry. Because the Bank of England no longer owns our debt, commercial enterprises do. And we have one of the most liberal banking regimes in the world - fat lot of good that does! It's not true that liberalism brings greater revenues. Intelligent control does.

When you say ttosca's posts and mine are lying, you're simply wrong. We have both quoted impeccable sources.

You may disagree with our (also quoted from impeccable sources) view on those facts, but CinnabarRed doesn't.

Trouble is; they're not the facts. Please do read CinnabarRed's tax thread.

Not paying tax in UK is not the same as not paying tax. The EU obligations UK entered into means that we have to abide by the EU rules on taxation within the community. I would be totally illegal for UK to impose additional taxes of those types.

Now, if we want UK to be the destination of choice for companies so that the tax revenue reaches UK coffers, we need to be looking at what changes will make it more attractive than the competition.

ttosca & garlic stop with all the facts and logic, you'll ruin everything

Can I just send a wave of loving admiration to you, ttosca?

niceguy: What ttosca said.

And what I said:
Andrew Haldane, of the Bank Of England, said in February 2011 that the cost of the credit insurance we have collectively provided to our banks is worth £100bn a year. He bases this on 2009 figures so, with the way insurance premiums go, it would be worth at least £115bn now.

'niceguy'-

What trillion pounds are you referring to? Do you mean this one? Government debt rises to £1trillion

If bad news is good news for Labour, then it's been a good week. Ed Miliband's challenge to the Hester bank bonus sprang from his well-prepared critique of irresponsible capitalism. Ed Balls drew support from the IFS, finding that a £10bn growth stimulus might indeed be available, supporting his own remedies ? an emergency VAT cut, a cut in employers' national insurance, and ready-to-go building projects to stir moribund demand. IFS charts obligingly showed what a small fraction of the debt problem was caused by Labour overspending in the good years, the rest caused by the crash

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/02/welfare-reform-bill-cameron-frightening

Or are you referring to the banking bailout where the government have insured bad debts (for a price)? In which case there hasn't been a trillion pound spent and that would only happen if every debt was bad. A bit like if every car in the UK crashed and Directline had to pay out on every policy.

There is no chance that we will recover all the money lost to the banks. Secondly, there is even a slimmer chance that all the cuts to public services, once lost, will be put back, even assuming that we recover a substantial amount from the banks.

These cuts are ideological. The purpose of them is to reduce the size of the state, decrease public spending, and introduce yet more privitisation in to public services - the same failed neo-liberal policies which have been destroying the middle class for the past 30 years.

And as for the Tobin tax, Cameron is on public record saying that we'd back the Tobin tax if it was on a global basis. 'Mr Cameron will make it clear at the Group of 20 summit in Cannes on Thursday that Britain will not support a tax unless it is implemented at a global level ? something which is highly unlikely to happen because of opposition from the US, Canada and other countries' FT source

Seems sensible to me. Especially given we're the financial services hub of the world. If we implemented a tax unilaterally then our best banks like HSBC may leave.

Except they wont, because the amount they pay is tiny, and the benefits of operating in the UK, with such low corporation tax and lax rules on banks to gamble and exploit people makes the UK such an attractive destination. If the banks mess up, the public will bail them out.

Now given the massive amounts of tax they actually pay to the Treasury and the numbers of highly paid jobs they create, this would be a hell of a gamble. The other EU countries don't care. Their financial services sectors are tiny in comparison. The equivalent would be asking the french to tax farmers. See what Sarkosy would make of that?? In fact we know. Everytime we suggest reform to the CAP the French tell us to pissoff.

The difference is that French farmers didn't cause the financial crisis. They didn't commit fraud on a massive scale. They don't gamble with public money. They don't speculate. They don't cause economic instability. They don't cause the tax payer to bail them out hundreds of trillions of pounds (whatever the subsidies). They don't pay their CEOs million dollar bonuses from the public purse.

The banks absolutely should pay the Tobin tax because they're responsible for the financial crisis.

*'niceguy'-

I'm sure there are companies taking the piss but so are there many individuals. And I'd argue that it's much harder for a multinational company to [b]evade[/b] tax because of their high profile.

You might argue that, but you'd be wrong. Not many individuals manage to make millions in income, the way large corporations make millions (or billions) in profit, and yet pay 0% in tax.

Corporations can get away with this because they can offshore their operations in a way that households can't. Furthermore, most individuals aren't able to 'negotiate' themselves out of billions of pounds in tax the way Goldman Sachs or Vodafone can.

But the problem is that we have a lot of people who genuinely believe our financial difficulties are because the rich are avoiding paying tax and not because quite simply we're overspending.

Our financial difficulties are not because we're overspending, as I have shown a million time before. We were not experiencing a deficit crisis before the financial crisis. Our problem is lack on tax revenue, caused by the financial crisis. Our deficit was at 3% prior to the crisis. Post-crisis, it is at 11%. This is not because our public spending shot up 8%, but because a lowering in tax revenue, caused by a recession, which was caused by the financial crisis.

And the press are happy to feed off this by printing articles which twist the truth to sell more papers and the government are happy to let this continue as it means they're being let off the hook.

The press aren't doing this. Unfortunately, the Tory scum have successfully created a narrative that the problem we have is that we spent too much. This is false. The economic crisis was caused by the financial meltdown and bailout, and subsequent recession.

So if you are going to complain about tax avoidance from big companies I think your evidence needs to be stronger.

You're not really one to listen to evidence, niceguy.

What trillion pounds are you referring to? Do you mean this one? Government debt rises to £1trillion

Or are you referring to the banking bailout where the government have insured bad debts (for a price)? In which case there hasn't been a trillion pound spent and that would only happen if every debt was bad. A bit like if every car in the UK crashed and Directline had to pay out on every policy.

And as for the Tobin tax, Cameron is on public record saying that we'd back the Tobin tax if it was on a global basis. 'Mr Cameron will make it clear at the Group of 20 summit in Cannes on Thursday that Britain will not support a tax unless it is implemented at a global level ? something which is highly unlikely to happen because of opposition from the US, Canada and other countries' FT source

Seems sensible to me. Especially given we're the financial services hub of the world. If we implemented a tax unilaterally then our best banks like HSBC may leave. Now given the massive amounts of tax they actually pay to the Treasury and the numbers of highly paid jobs they create, this would be a hell of a gamble. The other EU countries don't care. Their financial services sectors are tiny in comparison. The equivalent would be asking the french to tax farmers. See what Sarkosy would make of that?? In fact we know. Everytime we suggest reform to the CAP the French tell us to pissoff.

The EU is ultimately a collection of countries all vying to get the best deal it can for it's own country. There is no 'common good'. If there were, France would reform the CAP and Germany would guarantee the bad debts of the PIIGS countries, so ending the Euro crisis overnight.

If the UK is so European wrt taxation, how come we're the ones holding out against the Tobin tax? That one would have my vote in half a heartbeat.

our financial difficulties are not because the rich are avoiding paying tax but because quite simply we're overspending.
(I had to switch your negatives to make the quote read logically.)

I must be ever so stupid; I thought our financial difficulties were because we provided almost a trillion pounds to super-rich companies, run by super-rich men, at pathetically low interest and with no expectation of repayment, so they could remain super-rich and pay as little tax as possible. Do put me right

I was under the impression, likewise, that the super-rich men who run super-rich companies, like our very British Philip Green, gained greatly from our benevolence by taking out even bigger loans from UK banks and offsetting those loans against earnings in Britain. I thought, perhaps, they wouldn't have been able to get those loans if we hadn't kindly helped the banks?

Do correct me, niceguy

My apologies for getting my Boots muddled up!

But to pretend that there are no companies totally taking the piss is a bit odd tbh.

I'm sure there are companies taking the piss but so are there many individuals. And I'd argue that it's much harder for a multinational company to [b]evade[/b] tax because of their high profile.

But the problem is that we have a lot of people who genuinely believe our financial difficulties are because the rich are avoiding paying tax and not because quite simply we're overspending.

And the press are happy to feed off this by printing articles which twist the truth to sell more papers and the government are happy to let this continue as it means they're being let off the hook.

To bring it back to the original point of the thread and that is you claim we should be bothered about Amazon not paying taxes in the UK when in reality it doesn't/shouldn't have to because it is registered in another EU country. If we suddenly expect Amazon to pay UK corporation tax because it sells stuff here then surely it would only be fair for say....Dyson to pay corporation tax across all EU member states because it flogs overpriced hoovers there.

The whole reason d etre for the EU is any company anywhere within member states can trade freely with each other.

To imply Amazon of dodging tax because it hasn't paid corporation tax here is akin to a Frenchman accusing you of avoiding paying income tax in France because you sold something to him via eBay.

So if you are going to complain about tax avoidance from big companies I think your evidence needs to be stronger.

I expressed that badly - I mean the attitudes/justification/demonisation varies so much between tax evaders and benefit claimants scrounging wastrels

I agree- sold out! The Americans messed it up, though, so he (or his son?) had to buy it back. When I worked for them in the 1970s it was extremely philanthropic. It ran a profit-sharing scheme, much like John Lewis without the partnership, provided tons of free healthcare services to pensioners and was benevolent in terms of employee care.

Mind you, M&S did quite a bit of that back then too.

About half of benefit money, fraudulent or not, goes overseas, Julia, because the utility companies and supermarket chains are foreign-owned. Rents probably stay in this country long enough to circulate.

Avoided tax money goes directly overseas, as that's how most of the tax is avoided.

I guess you could say rich people are more likely to shop at Waitrose, which is at least British

The argument that tax concessions to multinationals encourage local economic activity is no longer true. It hasn't been for quite a while.

Some of you might like to know that Bermuda boasts a shockingly poor underclass - there are people living in caves, orphaned children with no home or education, etc. The rapidly widening wealth gap is giving rise to unprecedented levels of crime - still quite low compared with Jamaica, for example, but it's getting worse and it tax haven status along with handy location makes it a popular drug-running hub.

\link{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Boot\Jesse Boot} died in Jersey

he was a big local benefactor in both Nottingham & Jersey

but he "sold out his controlling interest to American investors in 1920"

interesting that it says sold out, not just sold...

Henry Boot's grave is in Jersey - Is that Henry Boot the builder, then?
The Boots of Boot's the Chemist were all from Nottingham, where the company was based until becoming Swiss in 2008.

HSBC is going back to Hong Kong, having wriggled out of its interest and tax obligations while ripping off the NHS.

It's been suggested ^^ that unpaid tax money goes back into the economy, so it's no real loss. So does benefit fraud money.

oh, Jesse Boot!

His wife was from Jersey according to wiki

Henry Boot?