Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014 • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by Cookingboy » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

phlo wrote: post #273

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…

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…

This doesn't solve the globalization problem. Say..an American company such as Walmart goes to a country, kill all their local competition with lower price, and make a ton of profit and then distribute them amongst Walmart shareholders in the U.S.

Sure those shareholders will pay cap gain or personal income, but now since you eliminated corporate tax completely, the net tax revenue of the country wal-mart operates in is no diminished.

This is a great idea to increase the wealth gap between developed countries and the rest of the world, for good or bad. Considering how many international conglomerates are American, European or Japanese.

Developing countries wouldn't stand a chance this way.

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

#392

Post by Frondo » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #387

sigzero wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he is saying that at all. Of course Apple is going to use every loophole they find. They are a business and that business is making money. The only way to fix it is to remove the loopholes.

> The only way to fix it is to remove the loopholes. Or you know, to have the people running the business have a sense of ethics.

Well, yeah. Like, if your company is headquartered in Cupertino, maybe then act like it when tax time comes and pay your US and California taxes.

Setting up a nesting doll stack of shell corporations to dodge all that is, right now, legal, but is that the world I'd want to have a hand in building? Nope.

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

#393

Post by caskance » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #380

caskance wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're of course free to make that choice, thanks to the USA.

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

#394

Post by tptacek » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

caskance wrote: post #261

saiya-jin wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or... you might become a realist, and maybe try to come up with solutions applicable in real world, on real people and real situations. I'm not claiming I know what the solutions are. But I am damn sure theoretical solutions for theoretical situations tend to fail spectacularly in reality, no matter what topic they are about.

You could support Lawrence Lessig's presidential campaign.

I think you missed the part of parent comment about "realism".

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

#395

Post by oberstein » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #330

forrestthewoods wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

The best possible tax scheme for poor people would be a wealth tax. Make it a flat wealth tax, and I'm with you: 10% (or whatever) of what you possess, into the community coffers every year. Don't muck around with income, it's too easy to game.

Some of us initially poor but nouveau-rich would like to retire before we're old, you know. A wealth tax makes that much harder than it already is. You would also kill property ownership by all but the ultra-rich who have enough assets elsewhere to make up the continuous drainage because home appreciation does not grow that fast.

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

#396

Post by funkyy » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #366

funkyy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you write this as a bad thing? Its better for economy if brokers would focus on long term trades. Also usually high-volume low-profit businesses are the ones that are arbitrating prices and often are just middle man. No need for that. There is a way around. Obviously there would be FEW businesses that would be affected and need to change the way they work, but this comes always with any tax changes. Anyways,…

I assume you write this as a bad thing? I don't know about you, but I really like what Amazon provides to me, and am quite glad corporations like it aren't strangled by our tax code.

If the whole chain of production and sales would be relieved from paying accountants and being charge stupid tax, then the overall prices would fall. You give me an example of Amazon. Would 3%* of overall cost added to the end product be higher than 3 companies sustaining their accounting teams going over taxes etc. + you required to pay sales tax? Revenue tax = no sales tax. Still think it would be more expensive?

1 very low tax to replace all the taxes from the producer to customer seems like much better option than being "not strangled" by current tax laws.

*3% assuming there is producer, distributor/owner and Amazon in the chain.

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

#397

Post by lifeisstillgood » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

There are several main pain points :

- companies need to be treated as "unitary" - that is passing profits around internally should not affect the tax paid

- profit is the least definable of all measures. Revenue is something companies don't like to lie about.

- this change will have to come to small and even consumers to be fair (my wife and I are a unitary item ? Can we share tax allowances?)

- even if we decide on treating companies as one black box, choose a better metric to tax on (revenue, dividends) we still do not have a formula for distributing across national borders. Should the US get all Facebooks profits? No. Should Facebook pay UK based on number of UK users it has? Doubtful. So ....

We are not going to see this end well - unitary treatment seems obvious but a international agreement on how to divide tax will need another two world wars to sort out.

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

#398

Post by bduerst » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

phlo wrote: post #358

bduerst wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are entire industries with thin margins (e.g. grocery, airline, blue collar services) that would be destroyed if you forced them to pay the same dividends as others. Why are you fixating on share price? Now how are you going to tax LLC, LLP, etc.? Privately traded corps that don't have a market price?

As I said, forcing companies to pay dividends was the parent poster's idea. If anything like that were to be entertained, I'm sure the forced dividends would be in relation to the corporation's profit. As for privately traded corps and partnerships: My proposal was to tax capital gains. This could be done at each realization event, and at that point your transaction will usually have a market price. If you are exchan…

That would be double-taxing capital gains, since individuals are already taxed on it, and would de-incentivize companies from giving corporate income to workers while incentivizing companies to hoard economic wealth. You want companies to spend money, not keep it.

Most limited liability organizations also don't have equity, which creates another loophole in your system. Now you're starting to get into why corporate income tax is complex.

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

#399

Post by oldmanjay » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

byroot wrote: post #228

guard-of-terra wrote: post #139

Earlier 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…

Treating everyone the same blindly is the very essence of fair. It is, however, unjust by your sense of justice. There's a vast difference between the concepts.

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

#400

Post by e12e » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

funkyy wrote: post #272

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…

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…

You're saying I need to divide my $25 million revenue corporation into two?