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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

#191

Post by tgv »

fallingknife wrote: post #12

Why can't governments learn that taxing corporations is pointless? The same revenue is can be raised more simply through sales tax and personal income tax on salaries and distributions.

Sales tax disproportionally affects the poorer. That's undesirable, to say the least.

Restructuring taxes will take a lot more work, and then end up with hundreds, if not thousands of extra taxes, each of which will be "avoidable" if you have enough lawyers, simply because the system won't be able to keep up.

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

#192

Post by arczyx »

sbennettmcleish wrote: post #7

220bn profit? Really? Surely they mean "revenue"

I think that 220bn is the profit of that particular Irish subsidiary. They got their revenue from all other Microsoft's subsidiaries around the world and only need very little expense ("directors", etc). Hence, profit.

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

#193

Post by yunohn »

igravious wrote: post #179
yunohn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay easily 40%+ effective tax on my income in NL. Not sure why you’re so dismissive of the poster.

Because many people in Western countries do not fully appreciate how well off they are in global terms. https://www.icalculator.info/netherlands/income-tax-rates/20... 37.35% Income from €0.00 to €68,507.00 49.5% Income from €68,507.01 and above Therefore if you are (for instance) paying 40+% effective tax on your income in the Netherlands you're clearly earning north of €70k a year. To put that in context – “You Are…

Income is usually relative to the person’s location. It’s not very useful to compare my situation to that of a person in the global south. Income correlates closely to cost of living.

I fully appreciate that I make more money than “a lot of the world”. But I don’t think it’s wrong to ask that corporations and high-net-worth individuals, also pay their fair share and not just leave the burden to people like me.

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

#194

Post by TimPC »

johnday wrote: post #145
willcipriano wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe it is the role of the person being paid to justify the expense. If you get hand wavy and tell me its too complicated I'm just going to presume you are stealing from me.

The Government is not "being paid" tax dollars[^0], it is (in principle, at least) spending and redistributing wealth in ways which benefit all citizens. UKGov releases these reports, for example https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-statistic... - good luck condensing these down to the point where they can fit in any taxpayer's head, and this is just the surface level outgoings. > If you get hand wavy a…

What exactly is your background where you assume your answer is correct when you know even the experts have substantial disagreements on taxation. Maybe there are a lot of legitimate disagreements on how much and which taxes because taxes aren’t a universal good but rather a necessary evil.

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

#195

Post by namdnay »

fxtentacle wrote: post #92
rorykoehler wrote: post #65

We should stop all taxation and use inflation to pay for everything instead. Much simpler and no one can get out of it.

Won't work because all truly wealthy people can secure their wealth against inflation, while poor people cannot. As a simple example, consider owning a house vs. renting. If you own the house, the actual number doesn't matter. If you're renting, the ratio between rent and salary is highly critical for your lifestyle.

> Won't work because all truly wealthy people can secure their wealth against inflation, while poor people cannot.

I don't agree with this. The "truly wealthy" don't have any magic recipes that are better long-term than just MSCI World ETF or similar

> As a simple example, consider owning a house vs. renting. If you own the house, the actual number doesn't matter. If you're renting, the ratio between rent and salary is highly critical for your lifestyle.

If there is inflation you don't feel it as a renter either, because your salary and the rent both increase in lockstep (and in many countries, rent increases once in contract are tied to inflation)

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

#196

Post by TimPC »

Most economists around the world support eliminating the corporate tax and raising capital gains to compensate. In addition to vastly reducing the amount of accounting needed it would make structures like this pointless. Perhaps governments should get on this as a priority. It seems like early movers would attract a lot of investment.

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

#197

Post by Grustaf »

maccard wrote: post #77
kowlo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right - but it depends how and when you pay yourself... a balance of salary and dividends, where dividends are not deductible. For me I may have a good year followed by a weak year, so I use last year's profit to keep me going!

If you're paying dividends, you're not paying 40% income tax on that. Microsoft employees are also paying 20-40% income tax remember.

Sure, so Microsoft still (not so) indirectly contributes to the tax coffers. But it's still pretty bad that the rich MS shareholders can benefit from schemes like these, while employees can't.

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

#198

Post by yunohn »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #175
yunohn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would you pay as a single person? And what does it cover? If you have a family, premiums increase significantly. In NL, €150 doesn’t cover emergency care, dental, eyes, or various specialists. Medicines and treatments are also part of the deductible.

400 CHF/month. If it doesn’t cover emergency care, then what good is it? You can’t really call it health insurance.

Wow, 400 CHF is a lot! NL does guarantee emergency treatment will be provided, and the excess above the deductible will be paid by the insurer.

Aside, I’ve had friends who moved and found that Swiss income taxes are also much lower than NL in most cantons. Is that true in your case too?

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

#199

Post by rorykoehler »

pydry wrote: post #187
rorykoehler wrote: post #65

We should stop all taxation and use inflation to pay for everything instead. Much simpler and no one can get out of it.

This is what Lenin did IIRC.

We need to do it without the central planning the economy (which incidentally Lenin also wanted to do on a local/cottage industry level).

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

#200

Post by wwtrv »

fxtentacle wrote: post #92
rorykoehler wrote: post #65

We should stop all taxation and use inflation to pay for everything instead. Much simpler and no one can get out of it.

Won't work because all truly wealthy people can secure their wealth against inflation, while poor people cannot. As a simple example, consider owning a house vs. renting. If you own the house, the actual number doesn't matter. If you're renting, the ratio between rent and salary is highly critical for your lifestyle.

Poor people usually don’t have any wealth so if wages would be directly tied to inflation I don’t see how would this would benefit the wealthy more. Of course historically wages tend to lag behind inflation, often quite significantly.
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