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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

#421

Post by DonaldFisk »

coldtea wrote: post #385
znq wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to deny what you say is true, but just out of curiosity, is there any proof that Apple is doing this and how do implementations of this lobbyism look like? Just trying to understand how all this works.

Maybe it's because of coming from a European background, but this kind of questions are quite baffling for me. I know you mean well, but I find that the idea that corporations do this kind of thing doesn't need any more proof than the fact that the earth is round. If one follows the news, there are constant reminders of this kind of lobbying going on (corporations asking for special treatment, especially when it come…

One possible solution is making corporate lobbying illegal, with severe penalties, i.e. long prison sentences for those involved. Corporate lobbying corrupts democracy, so why should it be allowed to exist?

Then, simplify the tax system. The more complex a system is, the easier it is to game. If necessary, tax revenue instead of profits: if a widget is sold here, the company which sold it should be taxed here.

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

#422

Post by smt88 »

kuschku wrote: post #307
smt88 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what I was saying is that industry Y might save the government money as well. The net effect might be that the government has more money. To continue using Uber as an example, not only do they potentially decrease the costs of operating the government (see my reasoning above), they're also still paying local employees. Those employees will spend their Uber revenue and pay taxes, just as taxi drivers would. Furthe…

Uber is in every way reducing tax income. Old model: The taxi company spends 100% of its income in the state, meaning the state collects 100% of the taxes of the costs. Uber model: Uber spends next to nothing in the state, so the state gets less. Uber still uses the same governmental resources, uber drivers earn less than the taxi drivers (less income, less taxes), and have less money to spend (economy shrinks, less…

> Uber still uses the same governmental resources

No, it doesn't, at least not in the US. It uses fewer government resources, although I don't have the data to say how significant of a difference it is.

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

#423

Post by hugh4 »

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.

Ethically your responsibility is to the shareholders who have given you their money to invest, not to some random government.

The governments of the world aren't doing a good enough job with the money I'm already giving them for me to start thinking about donating more.

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

#424

Post by czr80 »

oldmanjay wrote: post #399
byroot wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're also assuming a specific sense of justice - you're assuming that the utility of money is linear. (That is, giving up $10 is the same to someone earning minimum wage and to someone earning $150k).

You can hold that view - but recognize that it is a specific view, not an essential definition of fairness.

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

#425

Post by coldtea »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #421
coldtea wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's because of coming from a European background, but this kind of questions are quite baffling for me. I know you mean well, but I find that the idea that corporations do this kind of thing doesn't need any more proof than the fact that the earth is round. If one follows the news, there are constant reminders of this kind of lobbying going on (corporations asking for special treatment, especially when it come…

One possible solution is making corporate lobbying illegal, with severe penalties, i.e. long prison sentences for those involved. Corporate lobbying corrupts democracy, so why should it be allowed to exist? Then, simplify the tax system. The more complex a system is, the easier it is to game. If necessary, tax revenue instead of profits: if a widget is sold here, the company which sold it should be taxed here.

I agree with both ideas. Unfortunately for the thing to be fixed those passing laws should benefit from it being fixed -- but on the contrary they benefit for it being broken.

So, the first thing that should probably be fixed is: no campaign donations, at all.

Campain donations just let the politicians catering to the richer population get more advertising and marketing power.

I'd go as far as forbid all political / campaign advertising. If they want to convince, let them organically convince their local voters, then their state, and up to the whole party etc. Not with costly marketing, videos and large, costly, speaking appearances.

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

#426

Post by Tsagadai »

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…

A much simpler tax system would be to tax everyone like hedge fund fees. You pay 2% tax on all assets and 20% on profits those assets generate. Regardless of asset type (if it is worth money and can be traded, it gets taxed). Ditch everything else (especially regressive taxes like VATs) and keep a progressive income tax. This 'everyone' is individuals because someone, somewhere owns the assets.

Note that those are the pre-2008 hedge fund fees and the fees are presently less than that.

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

#427

Post by kuschku »

smt88 wrote: post #422
kuschku wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is in every way reducing tax income. Old model: The taxi company spends 100% of its income in the state, meaning the state collects 100% of the taxes of the costs. Uber model: Uber spends next to nothing in the state, so the state gets less. Uber still uses the same governmental resources, uber drivers earn less than the taxi drivers (less income, less taxes), and have less money to spend (economy shrinks, less…

> Uber still uses the same governmental resources No, it doesn't, at least not in the US. It uses fewer government resources, although I don't have the data to say how significant of a difference it is.

How does it use fewer resources? It drives on the same roads, uses the same infrastructure, and costs the taxpayer the same.

If you consider the taxpayer paying the bill because uber doesn’t insure properly, it costs even more.

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

#428

Post by dennisgorelik »

sbov wrote: post #375
legitster wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Country can still tax usage of these resources.

For human resources: income tax on salaries, unemployment insurance, medical insurance etc.

For some materials: excise tax.

For real estate: property tax.

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

#429

Post by [deleted] »

caskance wrote: post #393
kuschku wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]
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