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Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#31

Post by baddox »

DanBC wrote: post #8
maccard wrote: post #3

> Its most recent Companies House filing shows the company as making a pre-tax loss of £28.5m last year, but the firm also paid its 362 UK staff a total of £35.4m in share bonuses. So £35m was distributed as income towards the employees. This means the employees are paid extra, have more money to contribute and spend locally, and have paid the correct income taxes on the bonuses. How is this a bad thing?

Facebook reaps the rewards of the UK infrastructure. Facebook should behave as a responsible citizen and help fund that infrastructure. If they don't want to behave like responsible citizens they can fuck off.

As the parent commenter said, they are helping fund infrastructure by paying their employees a lot of money, a portion of which is taxed.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#32

Post by retube »

DanBC wrote: post #8
maccard wrote: post #3

> Its most recent Companies House filing shows the company as making a pre-tax loss of £28.5m last year, but the firm also paid its 362 UK staff a total of £35.4m in share bonuses. So £35m was distributed as income towards the employees. This means the employees are paid extra, have more money to contribute and spend locally, and have paid the correct income taxes on the bonuses. How is this a bad thing?

Facebook reaps the rewards of the UK infrastructure. Facebook should behave as a responsible citizen and help fund that infrastructure. If they don't want to behave like responsible citizens they can fuck off.

Yeah but bonuses will be taxed at 50%. Corp tax is 22% so it's better they pay their staff more and report less profit.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#33

Post by bkor »

gedrap wrote: post #23

I don't have a hope that this tax issue will be solved any time soon. There are hundreds of billions dollars involved globally, and when you are talking about that much money... It's very hard to do much about it, let's be realistic. I quite agree about the attitude expressed here (Let's Just Give Up on Taxing Big Corporations, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-08/multination... ). It's not fair but there…

That would give them a permanent unfair advantage over small and medium sized companies. In my country such companies employs loads of people.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#34

Post by smt88 »

jkahn wrote: post #12

Global companies offshoring profits and not paying enough tax (in the eyes of many countries) was a hot topic at the last G20 summit in Brisbane. This isn't limited to Facebook, as the article explains. The issue and background here is that when large companies operate globally, each country has its own local subsidiary, owned by the global entity. Money is made in each country by selling goods or services. How are t…

> provide the same level (or greater) services

I don't agree with that in all cases, and I particularly don't agree related to Uber.

When I lived in NYC, I often called "311" to complain about taxi-driver misconduct. This was the only outlet, and you really only did it because you wanted to feel better. There were never any direct consequences that you knew of.

If you consider the decreased cost of operating the 311 service, as well as lower taxi-related crime, less drunk driving, etc., I'd guess that a government would spend less when Uber had replaced all traditional taxi services.

(You can also think of Uber as redistribution of wealth from wealthier to less wealthy, since riders will usually be wealthier than drivers. In that case, Uber makes tax revenue go up, since poorer people usually pay more in taxes.)

Edit: Clarified some language, since no one seemed to have understood anything I said the first time.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#35

Post by switch007 »

mrkmcknz wrote: post #18

The UK press seems to have a field day when it comes to multi-national corporations not paying corporation tax. We will no doubt shortly have a number of MPs telling us how unacceptable this is and that Facebook need to start paying up. This all irks me a little. 362 Facebook staff on an average salary of say £65,000 will contribute at least £7,230,696.60 in taxes and NI to HMRC. Let's also not pretend that £65,000 i…

> 362 Facebook staff on an average salary of say £65,000 will contribute at least £7,230,696.60 in taxes and NI to HMRC

Let's not pretend all 362 Facebook staff are paying tax via PAYE.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#36

Post by crdoconnor »

mrkmcknz wrote: post #18

The UK press seems to have a field day when it comes to multi-national corporations not paying corporation tax. We will no doubt shortly have a number of MPs telling us how unacceptable this is and that Facebook need to start paying up. This all irks me a little. 362 Facebook staff on an average salary of say £65,000 will contribute at least £7,230,696.60 in taxes and NI to HMRC. Let's also not pretend that £65,000 i…

More trickle down economics!

Is it 1992 again?

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#37

Post by exDM69 »

3dfan wrote: post #9

What is the news here? FB was making a loss last year, so why should they pay corporation tax?

> FB was making a loss last year

They don't make actual losses - they pay all of their profits as "license fees" to some offshore entity to get their accounting show no profits. This probably means Luxemburg or Netherlands where they have a personalized deal with the tax authorities and the taxation of immaterial property is very low.

In reality they made a shitload of money, and are using creative accounting to make it look like they made a loss. This is tax evasion, not making a loss.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#39

Post by 3dfan »

The article is ultra thin on informations. What is the news? That FB UK transfered profits out of the UK to avoid corporation tax?

Is that a problem? I honestly don't know. What is the intention of corporation tax?

I would think that the "who uses our streets and is protected by our police has to pay for it" tax is VAT. How is FB doing in terms of VAT?

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#40

Post by iaskwhy »

kuyfiuyg wrote: post #19

I'm asking someone who is more knowledgeable than me on this topic. What would happen if you replace all (most) tax with VAT? That would mean everywhere there is a real transaction, that generates greater value, that is where the tax is. It would also make it impossible for big companies to do tax evasion - since you limit the effects to the 'leaves' of the tree that is the economic system, you can catch the money be…

I believe that's the US proposed FairTax, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax

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