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Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

theguardian.com

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Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#321

Post by snarf21 »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #245

There shouldn’t be „corporate taxes“. They tend to be difficult to collect, troublesome to declare and actually can not contribute much to national budgets. Think about it: Employees of multinational companies pay billions of income tax. Customers buying products and services from multinational pay billions in VAT. Shareholders of multinationals receiving dividends pay billions of capital gains tax. So what exactly i…

Exactly right. We want strong healthy companies. I'd rather see another special tax on all buybacks. That is the perfect time to collect more money and reduce some of the perverse incentives in the system right now.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#322

Post by nix23 »

sim_card_map wrote: post #271
jamsiedaly wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Ireland and from talking to friends and family most people are pretty happy with it. We give them a pass on taxes and they employ thousands of high end engineers here. We then collect large income tax revenues from these workers and subsidise the rest of the country.

Perhaps all countries should adopt 0% corporate tax then, if it's so beneficial.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#323

Post by TimPC »

dalbasal wrote: post #290
TimPC wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing wealth is a terrible idea because it requires government to get balance sheets from the masses. If you miscalibrate earnings minus inflation it’s also punitive. Lastly for many families most of their wealth is their home which isn’t exactly liquid even if it grows in value. Wealth taxes would force many to sell their houses.

The masses don't have wealth, especially if you exclude personal dwellings. In any case, you need "balance sheets" to have CGT, which in theory we do.

Capital gains taxes are based on difference between buy and sell price of specific assets and require only those two data points. That’s very different from accurately pricing an asset yearly.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#324

Post by throwawayzRUU6f »

frockington1 wrote: post #147
tootahe45 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget your cap gains and consumption taxes

And death tax. And property tax for good measure

And the "minor" difference that corporations are taxed on profits, whereas individuals are taxed on revenue

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#325

Post by refurb »

new_here wrote: post #182

Take a moment to comprehend those numbers: FY18/19 - under $10bn profit FY19/20 - $314.7bn profit (3/4 of Ireland's GDP) and paid no tax on it. > The subsidiary, which collects licence fees for use of copyrighted Microsoft software around the world, recorded an annual profit of $314.7bn in the year to the end of June 2020, according to accounts filed at the Irish Companies Registration Office. Its profits jumped from…

Something doesn’t make sense. If it’s $437B in profit, then revenue must be higher?

And what this is saying is that Ireland’s GDP will double in 2020?

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#326

Post by macleginn »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #245

There shouldn’t be „corporate taxes“. They tend to be difficult to collect, troublesome to declare and actually can not contribute much to national budgets. Think about it: Employees of multinational companies pay billions of income tax. Customers buying products and services from multinational pay billions in VAT. Shareholders of multinationals receiving dividends pay billions of capital gains tax. So what exactly i…

This question is a bit convoluted, but see some arguments here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/income-tax/Corporate-income...

E.g., "The separate taxation of the incomes of corporations and their shareholders follows the legal principle that corporations and shareholders are distinct entities. Some scholars argue that it also accords with economic reality, particularly for large corporations with many shareholders who do not participate actively in controlling the enterprise. They consider a corporation income tax justified as a charge for the privilege of doing business in the corporate form, as a means of covering the costs of public services that especially benefit business, and as a way of capturing part of the profits of large enterprises."

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#327

Post by apercu »

This is really, really, really a problem. I know a lot of us make decent money and we write large "checks" to the government because we're in high tax brackets, but seriously. The middle class has gotten smaller. If you live in a city a house costs a million dollars. Many people don't have adequate healthcare. Yet we are allowing the richest people in the world to have astronomical profits and pay no tax to help cover the costs of society, while we squeeze the "working rich" (high earners that don't get most of their income from dividends/capital gains) and working class .

Now, maybe if you are making 300+ you don't feel squeezed. But in all fairness, not that many people make $300k.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#328

Post by msiyer »

pc86 wrote: post #291
ornornor wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And seen in another thread: Microsoft is lobbying the US govt to spend 250 million to make more software engineers by introducing computer courses in schools so that there are more SE on the market in the future so that they can hire for cheaper. Meanwhile, individuals are paying 20–50% income tax. What a wonderful world.

This argument comes up a lot but nobody is paying 50% income tax in the US. Even if you make a million dollars a year in W2 income, in California, which has the highest marginal tax rate, you'll pay roughly 40% effective, almost entirely to the federal government. Realistically you're going to make a lot less than that W2, which drives the effective rate down considerably, and as remote work becomes more of an expect…

Income tax is not the only tax one pays. Every penny one spends, saves and withdraws is taxed. It may add up to more than 50% in some instances.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#329

Post by notahacker »

pembrook wrote: post #317
axlee wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better yet, dump corporate tax altogether and simply enforce a global flat tax on all forms of personal income, both capital gains and salary. Fraudsters skirted that by keeping their corporation's assets on the books and expensing everything, never actually receiving/spending anything themselves.

People are already incentivized to do that in the current system. How does removing corporate tax make that any different?

By removing the audit of the corporations.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#330

Post by Frost1x »

pc86 wrote: post #291
ornornor wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And seen in another thread: Microsoft is lobbying the US govt to spend 250 million to make more software engineers by introducing computer courses in schools so that there are more SE on the market in the future so that they can hire for cheaper. Meanwhile, individuals are paying 20–50% income tax. What a wonderful world.

This argument comes up a lot but nobody is paying 50% income tax in the US. Even if you make a million dollars a year in W2 income, in California, which has the highest marginal tax rate, you'll pay roughly 40% effective, almost entirely to the federal government. Realistically you're going to make a lot less than that W2, which drives the effective rate down considerably, and as remote work becomes more of an expect…

>Also I think it's pretty disingenuous to assume that MS wants to see computer courses taught in school to drive down the cost of labor.

So, what's another good explanation as to why software heavy businesses want more software engineers? It seems to me that it's to increase supply to lower costs. If the claim is that they can't capture enough, they can raise comp even more to capture people who don't work in their businesses, train them on the job by reestablishing employer/employee loyalty, etc. Plenty of options there that aren't being pursued, the most obvious explanation as to why is because those options are costly.

Such businesses have been trying to lower expensive technical labor costs for decades now, trying all sorts of strategies (non-compete hire agreements, outsourcing/offshore teams, pushing more towards capturing recent grads with lower expectations, FLSA overtime exemptions for computer professions, reducing employment mobility by increasing hiring barriers, institutionally and indirect built in ageism, ...). I tend not to give 'the boy who cried wolf' too many chances, and that ship has long sailed.

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