Guest 683- Registered: 11 Feb 2009
- Posts: 1,052
Barry
it's something like:
Vodafone reported to have been 'let off' paying about £6 billion last year.
News Corp pay about 6% corporation tax when it should be about 30% -
and they are not alone:
US parent company Google Inc's results show that revenues from the UK have soared to £6.35 billion over six years - proof of its extraordinary success. Yet its official British subsidiary, Google UK Limited, has declared to Companies House that its total revenues have been just £526 million, chiefly to cover salary and office costs.
The result is that despite the fact that everyone knows Google is highly profitable, Google UK Limited has run at a loss and paid only £8.2 million in corporation tax.
Whatever the total is, across the board, this would have a significant impact were the Treasury to receive it. It could fund care homes, schools, hospitals............
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Mark - Are you suggesting they are somehow doing something illegal? You can pick out companies to have a go at them and make whatever allegations you wish the simple economic facts of life remain - these business provide employment and make a massive contribution to the economy. This country needs successful businesses and we depend on them, both big businesses and small businesses, they are the only organisations that generate wealth and need to be free to do so.
The concept of earning money before spending it and sensible financial management is something clearly lost to some. Perhaps ignored and put to the back of their minds because it is inconvenient to that nice cosy little world in which governments can tax, spend, borrow all they want without consequences. That is not real life, Mark - its just some left wing fantasy that time after time leads this country into financial and economic disaster.
Jimmy - this has been an intelligent discussion, you may think this is clap-trap but you clearly have nothing intelligent to say in counter to it. You may not understand finance but some of us do and have a professional involvement.
Guest 683- Registered: 11 Feb 2009
- Posts: 1,052
Barry
I am not suggesting it is illegal but that it is immoral and another example of different rules for different groups. This is not spite or envy but an observation. Your assertion that a freed up private sector will bring about economic harmony for all is some right wing fantasy. If they were to pay their dues they could provide more employment and more revenue but, freed of controls they will drive down wages and keep more for their shareholders and outsource to wherever costs are lowest. The more economically successful they become the more dominant they become and the less competition they face. There will only be one winner - and it won't be Joe Public.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
jimmy
i have deleted your post as it was a nasty attack on a fellow member.
paul has warned you a few times now about that, please desist posting stuff like that.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Mark - Are you suggesting that the two firms did not have their accounts drawn up under the correct accounting practises and codes? If so where is your proof? Without proof you are blowing in the wind. I am not an accountant personally (a bit too boring for me!) but I am quite certain that companies like these will have produced correctly prepared accounts from which the proper corporate taxes are paid. Any allowable expenses and offsets that may reduce tax are just that, allowable and in taking advantage of them the companies will have done nothing wrong or immoral. Exactly the same way in fact you would not have done anything wrong should you mitigate the impact of higher rate tax (or even basic rate tax) through the use of pension contributions, ISA investments and maybe investing cash in your wife's name should she be a non-taxpayer or a basic rate taxpayer. All legal and moral.
What bothers me Mark are the attitudes that seem to comes accross because these are the attitudes that gets this country into the economic mire time after time, that of seeing companies as something to be milked for as much tax revenue as you can screw out of them. In so doing you fail to see the revenue they bring to the country as successful business and through that success provide employment for many people (and income tax revenue through that).
Your attitude seems to be that public spending is superior and that governments know better than we or businesses how our own money should be spent. That is just wrong, we are not and should not all be serfs doing the bidding of the State. In fact the State causes at least as many problems as it solves and there is nothing morally superior about state spending at all.
In addition many people, ordinary people, benefit from their profits through having these successful companies in their pension schemes. Even I, with a high risk pension portfolio with just 40% invested in UK equities and mainly small and mid caps, have nearly 1% in Vodaphone, many pensions will have double that in my experience. There is nothing wrong or evil about businesses, whether big businesses or small businesses, their success is the key to all of us being better off.
Guest 683- Registered: 11 Feb 2009
- Posts: 1,052
Barry
in the words of your esteemed leader, "calm down, dear!"
All I have done is put an alternative argument to yours to illustrate a point I made earlier that there is always another side.
My beef about big business is with blind allegiance to it that means, in some people's eyes, it can do no wrong whilst it is able to shape political decision making and create a system that favours them at the expense of the individual or even in some cases the nation.
Shall we go on or are you getting bored yet?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Bored Mark - discussing with you, never....
Blind allegance, no - understanding the relationship between businesses of all sizes with the State and the impact ill conceived economic policy and interferance by the State can have on the businesses and the very real damage that does to people's lives is my point.
Guest 683- Registered: 11 Feb 2009
- Posts: 1,052
Barry,
"All alone, or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
Some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's
wall"
So the rich bankers are mainly to blame for this mess yet the middle and lower classes have to pay for it and yes they are also many labour supporters in those to groups , coinsidence i think not , the tories are scared of the rich so will not ask them to pay to much . Theese cuts will not affect anyone earning a 100 k a year as much as some one on the average wage .
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Was it Nick Clegg singing Paul ?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Mark Clements - that is just Labour's fig leaf blaming the bankers, it does not wash in the real world.
I am not going to repeat, yet again, the many major errors made by Brown that made Britain's recession the longest and deepest of the G20 nations. I will give you one example though - the bankers were nothing at all to do with causing the structural deficit, that is entire down to Brown's fiscal policy and that cannot be shoved on to someone else. Brown thought he had 'banned boom and bust' and from 2001 ran the economy as if he believed that nonsense, he must have thought himself some kind of King Canute thinking he could hold back the tides.
Barry , its so easy to blame labour , as the tories are to scared to tackle the banks and big buisness . Sadly its the lower and middle classes that are and will really suffer with the cuts , and youth unemployment is rising sharply . What will happen to the million or so of them ?
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Mark you are in denial of the facts. The problem is not the banks and big business but bad government - we have had 13 years of it. The banks and businesses generate millions of jobs and £billions of revenue for this country. It was Brown who changed the banking regulations that allowed some, repeat some, of the banks to take risks buying up banks in the USA which was a major cause of the crunch.
It was Brown who spent and borrowed too much creating the massive deficit, which is directly the problem being addressed by the cuts. Banks and businesses did not do that.
The unemployed and anyone else suffering because of what is happening are the victims of Brown's 13 years of bad governance.
If you spend £4 for every £3 you have in income for a protracted time then you can expect massive problems and that is exactly what Brown did. The solution is the same as the one you would need to take if you did that - cut spending. The worse thing you can do in that situation is keep spending your way deeper and deeper into the poo.
Government finances are more complex than personal finances but the same basic laws of nature apply. Add one to one and you still make two.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Mark, I don't think the Tories are scared of the rich.
Labour has certainly left Britain with a national debt that has even increased since the new Government came in, owing to the time it takes to invert a process of debt accumulation, but once Gov. has implemented the cuts and reforms that affect many millions of us, the next ones to be object of attention will be the very rich, for starters.
They won't go on hording tens of millions of pounds in private accounts or through private assets.
The day will come when they will be coughing up much of their surplus assets.
Gov. is not afraid of them!
email: dover7@msn.com