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.

[Pagwatch]

Seriously. This weasel on radio 5 this morning just kept saying 'we pay all relevant taxes for the region' but wouldn't answer when Andrew Verity pressed 'yes, but that means tat you pay no tax in the ZuK because you have chosen to place Amazon.co.uk registered head office in Luxemborg.

If everyone phoned their mp about corporate tax evasion rather than mrs smiggins who is getting DLA when she looks fine we could pay off the deficit.

Hooray!

No. Seriously. Why don't we care about this?

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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?

Thanks for reporting me, whoever it was.

'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.