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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

#261

Post by jamsiedaly »

cheph wrote: post #238
m12k wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the current corporate tax laws basically punish single-nation companies, while giving multinationals a free pass. International tax laws desperately need an overhaul.

Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?

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.

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

#262

Post by maccard »

KMag wrote: post #136
maccard wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to pay 40% of my income as income tax. So do all the engineers, PMs, etc working at Microsoft.

All of the MS engineers in the U.S. have an effective income tax rate of 40%, not a marginal tax rate of 40%? Assuming Washington State takes about 10% marginal tax... that's about half their income coming in above the 32% federal tax bracket which starts at $163k. Is a starting salary for an engineer at Microsoft really around $320,000/yr.? If they're really pulling in that, one would hope they'd have some long-term…

Very few people _anywhere_ are paying a 40% effective tax rate.

I wasn't aware of the Washington state tax rate though.

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

#263

Post by TimPC »

dalbasal wrote: post #231
TimPC wrote: post #196

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.

It's extremely easy to speculate about this stuff academically. Economists tend to delight in theory-adjacent discussions. These have very little bearing on the real world. TRW, in this case, is a cascading infinity of corporate law, tax law, accounting practices, jurisdictions, lobbyists, parliaments and special interests. None of these exist in economist's models, unless they're modeling public choice theory or som…

Capital gains is far less gameable because there isn’t a mechanism to move your capital gains to a different tax region as an individual. Corporations may be able to game capital gains slightly when they hold shares in other corporations but that is very minor compared to corporate tax games that go on now.

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

#264

Post by [deleted] »

cheph wrote: post #238
m12k wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the current corporate tax laws basically punish single-nation companies, while giving multinationals a free pass. International tax laws desperately need an overhaul.

Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by wwtrv »

rorykoehler wrote: post #205
Lionga wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People of Venezuela would like to have a word with you

They are doing it illegally. My point still stands.

Generally it’s only illegal in countries which have unstable currencies and strict capital controls.

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

#266

Post by maccard »

Grustaf wrote: post #197
maccard wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not defending MS at all, but it's not correct to say "I'm contributing 40% plus corporation tax while Microsoft contributes nothing".

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

#268

Post by cheph »

seaourfreed wrote: post #226

Congress is corrupt (via lobbyists). Congress would make this illegal if congress men/women didn't sell out American Citizens. 88% of the cost of the US Fed gov is paid for by taxes by workers (income taxes). Less than 12% comes from all corp/business taxes combined with capital gains (taxing the rich 1%). Business shifting tax burden to workers is a massive scale problem. $3.5 Trillion = US Tax Revenues (2019) and 8…

> 88% of the cost of the US Fed gov is paid for by taxes by workers (income taxes). Less than 12% comes from all corp/business taxes combined with capital gains (taxing the rich 1%).

"the rich" pay income taxes as well: https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/

In fact, the top 1% paid 24.3% of all income tax. And the top 5% paid 40.6% of all income tax.

So it is most definitely taxing the rich.

The top 25% paid 66.4% of all income taxes, so to suggest that this is somehow a very regressive tax system seems to not hold water.

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

#269

Post by dangerface »

cheph wrote: post #238
m12k wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the current corporate tax laws basically punish single-nation companies, while giving multinationals a free pass. International tax laws desperately need an overhaul.

Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?

It's a representative democracy so no not really. We can vote on representatives but then they do whatever they want same as any other democracy.

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

#270

Post by pimterry »

EMM_386 wrote: post #164

What is the solution to this? I've wracked my brain and can't come up with anything. Companies will just continue to flee to whatever country is now offering 0%. Christmas Island has a new 0% corporate tax policy? Let's go buy a mailbox there and move our "headquarters". The old-school thinking is that low corporate tax policies encourage business, creating jobs in the process and boosting that country's economy. In…

> Countries would simply not agree to play along, no?

You require them to play along, you sanction them if they don't, and you penalize anybody locally who does any business with the companies who are 'based' there.

The EU maintains a current list of "non-cooperative tax jurisdictions", and applies these kind of rules today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_tax_haven_black....

If the global tax changes being discussed come to fruition, I'd expect that list to extend and the penalities involve to tighten up a whole lot further.

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