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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

#371

Post by rmc »

ahallock wrote: post #191
rmc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would happen if you replace all (most) tax with VAT? The poor would pay considerably more of their income as tax than the rich. And yes, there are ways to do tax evasion with VAT. There was a court case in the UK about whether Jaffa Cakes were a cake or a biscuit (because there are different VAT categories)

Then don't charge the poor for VAT.

How do you do that? What's the limit? Is it all or nothing, or a sliding scale? How is each and every shop suppose to know and keep track of if someone is in this category or not?

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

#373

Post by fryguy »

triangleman wrote: post #357
newjersey wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a very heavy handed approach that will almost certainly fail in the real world would be to tax corporate revenue, not profit. This is VERY invasive and I would not recommend it at all but I don't see an approach that is simple enough like this that does not require international co-operation. In my simple mind, the failure is in defining profits. How do we define profit? The devil is probably in the details. * If Wal…

How is taxing revenue more invasive than taxing profit? In the former scenario you have half as many things to audit than in the latter.

I think he means invasive as in it would affect companies' bottom lines more. Imagine something that primarily runs on a razor thin margin and makes up in volume and has $100M revenue and $5M profit, versus a company that has high margin and has $50M revenue and $5M profit. The first would be taxed much higher even though they have the same amount of profit.

Of course, because of the way companies can be structured, [Hollywood Accounting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting) is significant.

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

#374

Post by laichzeit0 »

te_chris wrote: post #263
laichzeit0 wrote: post #259

Trump's solution? Cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 15% from the current top rate of 35%. This would make corporate inversion unnecessary. I think he also had the idea of capping tax at 10% for companies wanting to bring their money back. At some point you have to ask yourself "why are companies doing this?" and fix the root cause.

Creating a race to the bottom is the opposite of fixing the root cause. The US already has a way to deal with this as it's the system used internally between states: levy taxes where sales happen.

So the idea is to punish corporates into submission instead of making it so cheap to do business in the USA they don't wanna go elsewhere?

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

#375

Post by sbov »

legitster wrote: post #327
phlo wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Someone put it best when they said "corporations may not have a heart, but they don't have a stomach either". Unlike people, corporations do not consume for the sake of consumption, instead they invest in assets. A tax on corporations is directly passed through to employees, customers, investors etc. From what I understand, the actual proposed replacement for the corporate income tax is much simpler: eliminate it and…

Don't dividends get taxed at the residence of the person being paid the dividend?

The problem is that corporations use the infrastructure and resources of countries they operate in. So you would still have a situation of a multinational company using the resources of country X without necessarily paying any tax for using the resources of country X.

This is not sustainable.

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

#376

Post by afsina »

krotton wrote: post #262
afarrell wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you still need taxes to pay for courts, police, armies, etc. Unless you are arguing the An-Cap thesis that these functions can be conducted by private entities. If you are, then congratulations: we're already living under your preferred system! It is just that for most territory, one company has seized monopolistic control of the territory, has called itself "the government", and no other companies have been form…

I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, I'm just conducting a mental experiment to see how far state minimalism can go. I'm quite convinced we can (and probably should) limit the competences of current behemoth governments - what I don't know (and am therefore trying to discuss) is to what extent.

Just for the context, Anarcho capitalists believe that minimizing the government is not possible. For them, once a government is established, it always gets bigger.

From the `Impossibility of limiting the government` section of `What must be done`[1]

"Now, once the protection monopoly (government) is in place, a logic of its own is set in motion. Every monopolist takes advantage of his position. The price of protection will go up, and more importantly, the content of the law, that is the product quality, will be altered to the advantage of the monopolist and at the expense of others. Justice will be perverted, and the protector becomes increasingly an exploiter and an expropriator. More specifically, as the result of the territorial monopolization of protection, two tendencies are generated. First, a tendency towards the extensification of exploitation, and second, a tendency towards the intensification of exploitation."

[1] https://mises.org/library/what-must-be-done-0

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

#377

Post by wereHamster »

jos3000 wrote: post #287
phlo wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not only govt, but private companies as well. Remember when the company behind the most widespread US tax software (can't remember its name) lobbied against simpler tax code? Why? It's simple, because it would cut into their sales!

Everybody who has something to lose will vote against a simpler system, doesn't matter whether its a private company or government.

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

#378

Post by sbov »

mike_hearn wrote: post #344
kuschku wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do I tax a shareholder living in US if I’m the UK government? I have no ability to do so.

You don't. But then again why would you - that shareholder gets no services from the UK government so there's no moral case for them to pay tax to a foreign country.

I disagree. The company which operates in the UK benefits, so the shareholder - who actually owns a part of the company - does too.

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

#379

Post by kuschku »

yrro wrote: post #334
kuschku wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full corporation tax, on their share of their worldwide income generated in britain.

But corporation tax is charged on profit, not income.

Ugh, english. Also, it should be charged either on income, or on the whole company overall. Also, payouts to investors should be taxed again.

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

#380

Post by kuschku »

caskance wrote: post #351
kuschku wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And one of those led to Facebook being charged billions, and the others will lead to the same outcome. "Investigations in the EU" means you’re fucked.

From the perspective of someone who actually understands modern technology, they actually mean the EU is fucked.

From the perspective of someone who sees the options of "fuck your own population over and kill all healthcare, welfare, etc" or "force companies to pay their taxes, and maybe lose some features like Germany has almost no Google services available", I’m pretty happy with the choice of free healthcare, college, etc vs. having access to Google Wallet
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