Rule bending?

[observer]

I take it that tax avoidance amounts to rule bending rather than rule breaking; which suggests that those to blame for this lost revenue, are those who write the rules IE Parliament. Given that MPs appear quite adept at bending rules themselves (expense fiddles), is it possible that they could actually come up with a set of laws that arn't riddled with loop holes?

[Cleopatra]

no

[algy]

wouldn't be to their advantage would it obs!

[Bazj]

Quite an interesting point made on sky news last night by a tax advisor.... he basically said that George Osbournes plan to spend millions of pounds and recruit extra HMRC staff to investigate the tax avoidance of larger companies was like the Police targetting motorists doing 30mph in a 30mph limit area......

 

 

 

No laws are being broken and unless the Government change the laws to make businesses that make a profit here, pay their taxes here instead of the loopholes that allow them to farm it off to a lower tax rated country; there is nothing he can do about it and the only people who can do anything are the public who should vote with the pounds in their pocket..... which appears to be the case with Starbucks who have apparently started to see a drop in sales after the publics disgust at their affairs! which would appear to be why they are voluntarily having cozy chats with HMRC (Probably to do a deal which won't make them pay the going rate)

 

 

 

So, buy from Costa and not Starbucks. Buy from WH Smith and not Amazon.... it's in your hands people!

[Evil Sid]

Can honestly say have never been in a starbucks, was close one day till I saw the price they were charging for a soup bowl of coffee.

 

Never bought anything off amazon either any electronic books I have purchased have been from waterstones and not W H Smith.

 

My reason for this is that I bought an ereader for Mrs Sid and after a week of fiddling she decided that she wanted a W H Smith one. So I bought her a Smiths one and also a Smiths gift voucher so that she could get some books for it. Slight problem was that the reader she had would only let her buy books from the KOBO website. All W H Smiths ebooks are form the same website, but that website did not accept the gift voucher. Went back to Smiths to get an ebook gift voucher and when I asked if the kobo site accepted them was eventually told no. I then pointed out to them that they would have a few complaints if people started to buy the ebook vouchers only to find they could not use them. the person agreed and then took them off the shelf.

 

So went to waterstones and got a gift voucher from them and had no problem getting books from their website.

 

as for loopholes, the only useful ones hang down from a gibbet

[Cleopatra]

Went into a Starbucks in Thailand. JUST THE ONCE. The bill for coffee and sandwiches was exhorbitant and there was nothing special about the coffee. Really cannot see what it is that people like about Starbucks. Casper and Gambini, on the other hand, is really good.

[asperity]

As Baz says, these companies are not bending any rules. They are, in fact, actually following EU law which states that they must pay tax in one of the EU countries. It is up to the companies to choose which country they wantto give the tax to and if the chancellor wants to benefit from this he needs to look at lowering the tax rates to attract these companies to move here from other low tax countries.

[safeway60]

The Cayman Islands has joined the EU ? Must have missed that one.

[asperity]

What have the Caymen Islands got to do with anything?

[Lt Kije]

Because you said EU law Asp,

[observer]

Never going to to stop the "evaders", until there's some kind of global agreement, which won't happen due to global competition. Even in the so called unified EU, competition (one country V another) thrives: Google based in Ireland which has one of the cheapest corporate tax rates in the EU, and the EU allows tax to be paid in any of it's member States. But it would seem that companies that trade here, should pay tax here; we just need some bright folk at the HMRC to come up with fool proof systems, and MPs to enact them into law.

[Lt Kije]

What other European Countries are doing about Google

 

http://www.accountancylive.com/croner/jsp/Editorial.do?channelId=-601055&contentId=2370907&Failed_Reason=Invalid+timestamp,+engine+has+been+restarted&Failed_Page=%2fjsp%2fEditorial.do&BV_UseBVCookie=No

 

Asp, as far as I can see it is more do do with British tax law than EU tax law.

[asperity]

I have to laugh t the idea of the Italians looking into tax avoidance by foreigners. Don't they like the competition? :grin:

[Bazj]

If you look at the list of companies that have their "head offices" in Southern Ireland, you will see why they use the European idea that they can pay corporation tax for all of their Euro operations in one chosen country. Ireland has corporation tax at a level approximately half of ours

 

 

 

Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, Dell, IBM, HP... the list goes on..... Either the EU sort out a level playing field in the form of a standard rate of corporation tax or the issue will continue.

[safeway60]

The Starbucks tax avoidance has nothing to do with Ireland...They have shown a loss to the taxman for the last 14 years out of 15 due to the exorbitant price they pay for their coffee beans....Guess who they buy their beans from ? Themselves !! That's right they own the coffee brokerage from whom they buy their beans. Worthy of Monty Python himself.

[observer]

Believe it's been estimated that this is costing the Treasury around £10billion pa. George, in his Autumn statement will (finally) be announcing an economic stimulus of around £5billion, which he will find from deeper cuts in Gov spending.

[Peter T]

Believe it's been estimated that this is costing the Treasury around £10billion pa. George, in his Autumn statement will (finally) be announcing an economic stimulus of around £5billion, which he will find from deeper cuts in Gov spending.

 

 

"costing" the Treasury??? What they haven't had, they haven't lost. Don't all firms with foreign ties, use the cheapest country for tax purposes? In fact, there can't be many companies that aren't foreign owned.

[observer]

If they don't get it from the rich, it'll have to come from the poor - doh!

[Peter T]

obs, you are seriously hard work at times.

read the post, I was referring to something they hadn't had, NOT the fact that they were short of money. It is like a firm making £3 million profit after making £4 million the previous year and saying they had made a loss. A loss in my book is when it's in the red.

[Lt Kije]

An interesting read

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20580545

[observer]

IF the revenue was due, it's a loss in my book - just means someone didn't pay or rather "avoided" paying.

[asperity]

Why Amazon don't pay UK tax:

 

HMRC

 

 

And this isn't new, it goes back to 1966

[observer]

It appears Starbucks have woken up and smelt the coffee, and are prepared to voluntarily pay £10million a year to HMRC for the next two years - strange, given they have no legal obligation to do so, and have not done so for the past 14 years (so Labour didn't sort it either). The balls clearly in the court of MPs, who've failed to give the HMRC the teeth and the staff to maximise revenues; quite the opposite, around 12,000 staff were lossed under Labour, and another 5,000 have gone under the Coalition. As with the UKBF and others, IF the staffing and the necessary legal powers arn't there, they won't do there job properly.

[Cleopatra]

Lost*

[asperity]

All you people who are screaming for Companies to pay tax do realise, don't you, that Companies don't pay tax? It's the share holders, employees and customers (that's you and me) who pay the tax. So if the Government takes more tax it's you and me that's paying it not some imaginary body called a "Company". Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas :rolleyes: