EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
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Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#2I don't understand why British news outlets have started to try and "shame" certain corporations over their tax returns. The practice has been known and used for many years, yet it's suddenly deemed newsworthy. I'm really surprised the BBC felt the need to report on this.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#3I don't understand why British news outlets have started to try and "shame" certain corporations over their tax returns. The practice has been known and used for many years, yet it's suddenly deemed newsworthy. I'm really surprised the BBC felt the need to report on this.
News has fashion, and tax avoidance is fashionable at the moment. Partly that's because government has made announcements about it, and partly because we're in austerity measures.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#4Vodafone, Starbucks, Google, Amazon, eBay.. As a person with a few companies in the UK that pay tax, it seems that the big companies can get away with whatever, where as last week I had someone from HRMC actually turn up at my house demanding payment because there had been a mixup with a £4k PAYE payment.. It beggers belief
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#5I don't understand why British news outlets have started to try and "shame" certain corporations over their tax returns. The practice has been known and used for many years, yet it's suddenly deemed newsworthy. I'm really surprised the BBC felt the need to report on this.
News has fashion, and tax avoidance is fashionable at the moment. Partly that's because government has made announcements about it, and partly because we're in austerity measures.
It's also very interesting to note that we have a cabinet who have themselves been involved in fiddling with their tax returns. The very same who have proposed and implemented big austerity measures.
I think it's good the public are aware what is happening with tax from corporations to cabinet ministers to the people. I know a few who wouldn't have any idea this is a standard thing and probably outraged that the public are being hammered for tax and large corporations pay relatively little in comparison (and if they don't, they may have it waivered).
There is another one about how Vodafone owed around £6 billion in tax and it was let waiver whilst big crackdowns on tax cheats were in progress. I might have my facts wrong here but most people I speak to about say the same thing: "it's unfair". This also may be terribly biased though, most people I speak to are working class and support Labour.
On the flipside, I can imagine some kind of rebound effect if any sort of big policy was made against it, where big companies are simply less inclined to do business here, with our economy suffering as a result since we're £100m out of pocket rather than £6bn up per co.
I don't know much about politics or economics, I merely reiterate what the majority of people say about it all and my own perspective. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#6I don't understand why British news outlets have started to try and "shame" certain corporations over their tax returns. The practice has been known and used for many years, yet it's suddenly deemed newsworthy. I'm really surprised the BBC felt the need to report on this.
Subsidiary companies often reduce their profitability by licensing or purchasing materials from a parent company located overseas in a low-tax region. While this is usually a relatively legal way of transferring some profitability abroad, most countries also have regulations which specify that the relative contributions of various entities in complex corporate structures have to be reasonable and reflect the location where value is created. So while things are murky with IP licenses, increased news coverage and public pressure can succeed in calling attention to particularly egregious situations.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#7Who pays corporation taxes on sales? I thought that's what VAT was for. Isn't corporation tax based on profit? If the cost of goods sold and expenses were £795m, then £1.2m on £5m in profit would seem pretty reasonable.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#8From the article:
> According to the Sunday Times, eBay had sales of £789m during 2010 in the UK at its four British subsidiaries. Using its worldwide profit margin of 23%, it would have made a profit in the UK of £181m, leading to corporation tax owed of £51m.
That's making a pretty big assumption, that Ebay's UK profit margin is the same as its worldwide profit margin.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#9It looks like the only tax regime that is stable in terms of revenue is one with low corporate income tax and relatively high personal income tax.
Re: EBay 'pays £1.2m in UK tax' on sales of £800m
#10Why can't they change the tax law to tax these companies? I know it would be difficult, but it can't be impossible. These companies will always want to operate here.