Excellent. Paying the smallest amount of taxes one is legally obligated to pay is one of the most noble of endeavors.
If every country got their "fair share" of revenue the total taxes on $1.00 would be approximately $1.50.
Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
281–290 of 449 posts
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cap gain is only paid on the profit made when selling. RSUs are taxed as regular income when they are awarded. Most likely the employees are high rate tax payers so it comes out at 40-45% tax + National Insurance.
Sorry what is this RSU you speak of? tax on employee share options is quite different in the UK to the USA. With a HMRC approved scheme CGT effectively goes away and you only pay CGT after your yearly allowance and only on a real gain - no massive tax bill on underwater share options.
An RSU is more like a stock grant than a purchase option -- the company provides shares of stock to its employees according to a vesting schedule. The fair market value of the shares at the time of vesting is considered income, and there is no cost to the employee (other than income taxes).
I don't know if this is a US-only arrangement, or if it's used in other countries as well.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Facebook reaps the rewards of the UK infrastructure. Facebook should behave as a responsible citizen and help fund that infrastructure. Paying their employees an extra £96,000 (on average) per head isn't them being responsible? The money is being paid to UK employees who will (in theory) spend it in the UK. I'd have a problem if they did what Apple are doing in the US - sitting on wads of cash because it's too expe…
its only responsible in the sense that they have to pay the caliber of tallent they want to attract that much. Its not like facebook is paying them more out of the goodness of their own hearts.
Also you can make the arguement that its the employees themselves paying these taxes, not facebook.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't seen anyone claim that Facebook is failing to pay all the tax they are legally obligated to pay. Did you mean something else by "everybody pays his taxes?"
There are currently investigations in the EU if FB did fullfil the requirements to use the tax loopholes they are using. If not, FB did not pay the taxes they are obligated to pay.
"Investigations in the EU" means jack shit. There have also been "investigations in the EU" about whether Google is an illegal monopoly and whether Facebook needs to segregate all its data on European entities into separate European data centers.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not finance helping quadriplegics from increased VAT? If it comes to that, why not finance helping quadriplegics from charity?
> Why not finance helping quadriplegics from increased VAT? Because VAT, beside being a very effective tax (it's the biggest source of income of most countries), is the most unfair one. Say a country have a 20% VAT Low income household need to use the entirety of their income to survive (food, housing, etc). So effectively 20% of their income is collected as VAT. Now a upper class household, let's say they save 25% o…
there is no enforceable way this would work. everybody would just pay some homeless/unemployed to buy him that expensive cool little thing, and give him 10 USD for the job. try to prevent that :)
at the end, poor people would become less poor, but only by screwing with system, and only very few of them. you can put some limits on who can buy what, but this will inevitably create a massive bureaucratic overhead, meaning another set of useless government jobs that create no added value, but draw cash steadily from treasury.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't seen anyone claim that Facebook is failing to pay all the tax they are legally obligated to pay. Did you mean something else by "everybody pays his taxes?"
There are currently investigations in the EU if FB did fullfil the requirements to use the tax loopholes they are using. If not, FB did not pay the taxes they are obligated to pay.
And if they didn't, they'll be fined and be forced to pay whatever they didn't, which will probably not happen again in the future as a way to avoid being fined.
If they did? You seem to be dancing around the central point, which is, these numbers, while absurd, are generally completely above board and legal. Nobody is going to pay more tax than they're obligated to, and it's absurd to expect otherwise.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#287Global 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…
Stories like this make me question if corporate tax even makes sense. However well designed, a tax code with today's complexities is going to have holes. If a savings of even one per mill may mean millions, corporations are going to spend insane amounts of money to hire the best experts to use every last loophole. Why don't we cut down everything to a couple of manageable groups that can be tightened down? I think th…
The big problem with this is that, under a simple tax system, if a government wants to increase it's tax revenue it is extremely easy for voters to understand what is happening. Governments prefer to make complicated tax laws because they are easier to spin.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the advice. I was pretty close to the threshold last year and it's looking likely I'll have to register this year so I'll certainly look into it. I'm actually between accountants at the moment, although HMRC's own PAYE RTI app at least makes that side of things ridiculously easy for me. I certainly wasn't looking forward to dealing with VAT on my own.
Freeagent also deals quite nicely with VAT, and you can set up for automatic direct debit... In fact I sometimes wonder what I'm paying my accountant > £100/month for :-)
Many a true word spoken in jest! It depends on the specifics of your company of course, but between FreeAgent, HMRC's free filing software[0], and a very mild interest in accounting, I've yet to find an accountant that could give me a positive ROI.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-use-hmrcs-free-f...
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not finance helping quadriplegics from increased VAT? If it comes to that, why not finance helping quadriplegics from charity?
> Why not finance helping quadriplegics from increased VAT? Because VAT, beside being a very effective tax (it's the biggest source of income of most countries), is the most unfair one. Say a country have a 20% VAT Low income household need to use the entirety of their income to survive (food, housing, etc). So effectively 20% of their income is collected as VAT. Now a upper class household, let's say they save 25% o…
The best possible tax scheme for poor people would be a simple flat tax that is impossible for rich people to avoid.
I've always felt your definition of "most unfair" to be a great fallacy. Yes poor people pay a higher percentage of their income. They also receive more in benefits than they give and the flat tax ensures the rich pay their share. The more complicated you make the system the more it will benefit the rich.
VAT is a net benefit for the poor. Making the whole system work that way, particularly in the face of globalization, is the best course of action. To declare it unfair is to cut off your nose to spite your face. In my opinion.
Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014
#290Global 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…
Simple 1% revenue tax on companies with revenue of more than $15 million would fix the issue. No other taxes, just revenue one, no tax credits, no refunds. No hiding costs, no going offshore, no creative accounting. One tax on all revenues that will hit your account. This would also help to cut out all the middle man driving prices up and make the logistic chain quite small. Some countries want to experiment with thi…
์So every broker company who makes profit on 0.05% transaction fee is going bankrupt, and no more high-volume low-profit business.