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The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

theguardian.com

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Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#41

Post by Nursie »

bko wrote: post #36
Nursie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a coal mine here in Australia (NT I think) run by a company called Adani. When it was being proposed they did the usual "but think of all the taxes!" song and dance to get it approved. It's never posted a profit despite about a billion in annual revenue, and so never paid a penny of corp tax. Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting losses like this is clearly not a…

> Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting serial losses like this is clearly not a viable, ongoing concern and ought to be wound up. Tax authorities don't need to do this. Investors will. Where will the money come from? If there's no future prospects, it will cease operations. > If Starbucks UK is a loss-making venture, they should have some explaining to do when they're o…

> If there's no future prospects, it will cease operations.

That's the point, there are plenty of future prospects, but the company is playing accounting games to hide the profits.

> I like how discussion of taxes turned everyone into a fierce defender of profit maximization.

No, we're just calling bullshit on the whole thing because we're tired of wealthy multinationals dodging taxes in our countries. That's how they should be contributing.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#42

Post by peyton »

Pooge wrote: post #28
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #20

I seriously do not understand why companies pay taxes on the income and not the revenue. (EDIT: I mixed them up) I pay on the revenue. I also buy things. I also consume. And somehow I can manage with taxes on the revenue. This would also solve the problem of companies that get 10 M€ in revenue, but somehow only 10€ is taxed because expenditure, capex etc

I got curious while reading and I've read this[1]: > Revenue is total money from core business activities before expenses are deducted. > Income, or net income, is earnings remaining after all expenses are deducted from revenue. Sorry for being pedantic. I don't understand why English has such ambiguous terms for something that shouldn't be. Or am I even more confused now? To directly answer your comment: I agree tha…

Producers produce up to the point marginal benefit equals marginal cost. Tax on revenue inflates marginal cost and would create shortages etc.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#43

Post by Swenrekcah »

Nursie wrote: post #15
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mentioned in the article: > contracts with customers were signed with Palantir’s US companies, which in turn paid a service fee to local country subsidiaries to deliver the work. Similar trick are used by many companies, for example Starbucks UK conveniently paid £40m in "royalty and license fees" to the parent company resulting in a £35m loss in the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/15/starbucks…

There's a coal mine here in Australia (NT I think) run by a company called Adani. When it was being proposed they did the usual "but think of all the taxes!" song and dance to get it approved. It's never posted a profit despite about a billion in annual revenue, and so never paid a penny of corp tax. Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting losses like this is clearly not a…

The worst part is that local competitors can’t use structuring like this to evade/avoid taxes, so eventually they go out of business.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#44

Post by rimbo789 »

The existence of Palantir is a significant public policy failure. It is a tool for corrupt actors - both private and public - to maximize how much they steal from all of us. Their use of existing tax policy is just an example.

Palantir should be shut down tomorrow; the data it’s collected deleted, its IP destroyed and its executives jailed.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#45

Post by greyw »

sevenzero wrote: post #35
greyw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know a single country that doesnt allow losses to be offset from future profits. Not a single one! It discourages investments in your country.

So I'll expect not having to pay VAT next time I buy from a franchised business operating in my country given that all of them usually make little to no profits officially.

The equivalent would be not having to pay taxes if you dont earn money (or lie about it which the franchise business might be doing legally or illegally). Fortunately its quite rare to have a job that results in negative income.

Unfortunately, VAT is a consumption tax that has little to do with the company. Your gov thinks you need to pay it because you consume. Are you paying a consumption tax on investments? No that would be really dumb

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#46

Post by Leif24 »

sevenzero wrote: post #22
bko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems entirely reasonable. Suppose you're a company and you lost $100m over the last few years, so naturally you have a sizable tax deduction from future earnings. Even if you're profitable now, over the life of your business you've lost money so it makes sense you don't pay taxes until you make back that $100m you lost. If you begin selling in a different tax jurisdiction, that would be unfair that you have to…

>so it makes sense you don't pay taxes until you make back that $100m you lost LOL. You losing money with your business is no excuse to not pay taxes on profits you make after losing money. Just because you lost money doesn't mean you dont make profits until you earned back that money. Taxes should be paid every time you make money in the country your business operates in. Simple as that. Everybody benefits off of ta…

> Just because you lost money doesn't mean you dont make profits until you earned back that money. Taxes should be paid every time you make money in the country your business operates in.

Over what timescale? For instance, if the first month I operate my business I have a loss of $50,000 (have to buy initial supplies and equipment, hire employees, etc.), but in the second month sales start taking off and I net $20,000 do I (a) have a total loss of $30,000 and pay no tax or (b) owe taxes on the $20,000 in month two?

This can be extended, e.g. profit and loss can be calculated on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. In the extreme case, this is no longer a tax on profit but on revenue (which essentially runs any business that has a smaller margin than the tax rate out of business since every dollar of revenue coming in results in more tax liability than the business actually nets).

Before you say "obviously profit and loss should be calculated in a yearly cadence" I would note that the choice of a year is fairly arbitrary and this taxation scheme would greatly disincentive any sort of capital allocations that would take more than a year to payoff (as a small example, would incentive leasing equipment annually vs. buying outright).

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#47

Post by Nursie »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #43
Nursie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a coal mine here in Australia (NT I think) run by a company called Adani. When it was being proposed they did the usual "but think of all the taxes!" song and dance to get it approved. It's never posted a profit despite about a billion in annual revenue, and so never paid a penny of corp tax. Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting losses like this is clearly not a…

The worst part is that local competitors can’t use structuring like this to evade/avoid taxes, so eventually they go out of business.

Yep, that's definitely one of the worse negatives here, they use this stuff to outcompete small businesses. The tax games directly fuel the enshittification of the British high street into a Starbucks/Costa wasteland.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#48

Post by Swenrekcah »

bko wrote: post #36
Nursie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a coal mine here in Australia (NT I think) run by a company called Adani. When it was being proposed they did the usual "but think of all the taxes!" song and dance to get it approved. It's never posted a profit despite about a billion in annual revenue, and so never paid a penny of corp tax. Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting losses like this is clearly not a…

> Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting serial losses like this is clearly not a viable, ongoing concern and ought to be wound up. Tax authorities don't need to do this. Investors will. Where will the money come from? If there's no future prospects, it will cease operations. > If Starbucks UK is a loss-making venture, they should have some explaining to do when they're o…

> I like how discussion of taxes turned everyone into a fierce defender of profit maximization. Nothing about adding back to the community, paying decent wages, etc.

You are fundamentally missing the issue. What most of these multinationals do is to extract value from the places they operate but then move all the profit (in the books) to another tax jurisdiction, thereby not contributing to the community where they operate. Furthermore this undercuts local businesses, further impoverishing the area.

Global commerce and cooperation unlocks some truly great opportunities but the finance people can really bring ruin if allowed free reign.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#49

Post by perpetuallunch »

Nursie wrote: post #15
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mentioned in the article: > contracts with customers were signed with Palantir’s US companies, which in turn paid a service fee to local country subsidiaries to deliver the work. Similar trick are used by many companies, for example Starbucks UK conveniently paid £40m in "royalty and license fees" to the parent company resulting in a £35m loss in the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/15/starbucks…

There's a coal mine here in Australia (NT I think) run by a company called Adani. When it was being proposed they did the usual "but think of all the taxes!" song and dance to get it approved. It's never posted a profit despite about a billion in annual revenue, and so never paid a penny of corp tax. Personally I think the tax authorities ought to take the line that a company posting losses like this is clearly not a…

Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.

Queensland has a payroll tax, I don’t believe this is can be offset against losses, see here for more info https://qro.qld.gov.au/payroll-tax/

GST is payable on goods they use and services they consume.

Mineral royalties are in Queensland https://qro.qld.gov.au/royalty/calculate-mineral/rates/

Employees of said company are required to pay income tax on their earnings.

So while it may be completely factual that a resource extraction company paid no tax on its corporate profits, it is not factually complete as there is tax revenue generated by the operation of the company.

A company that manages to generate no taxable profit isn’t necessarily committing tax evasion, that’s a crime. It is most likely practicing tax avoidance, which any economically rational actor ought to do.

Note, I’m not making a value judgement here.

There’s plenty of good arguments to be made that Australia’s taxation system is in need of reform, and many that I’m in favour but are beyond the scope of this discussion.

Re: The software group Palantir paid just £2M in corporation tax in the UK in 2024

#50

Post by drdec »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #37
drdec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies run at an extremely narrow margin. For example the margin for grocery stores is reportedly 1%. If you changed the tax system to tax gross revenues, now those stores would need to dramatically raise prices to accommodate. It's not an easy problem.

It all depends on the tax level. If today they are texted at, say, 20%, this could be a 5% on gross revenue (or whatever), and indexed on the revenue (like for humans). I also run on narrow margins, and nobody cares.

I am saying there are unintended consequences to such changes. If all the grocery stores all at once raised prices 5%, your margins might turn negative. And most of your neighbors.
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