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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

#411

Post by neilwilson »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #60
neilwilson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best tax is one that is imposed on an individual but paid at source by the corporation paying them. Individuals shouldn't see tax. That way the voters don't complain when you need to put it up. Sales tax is similarly a pain - particularly when you have differing rates. At which point we get into the famous is it a cake or a biscuit type cases to decide where the dividing line is.

>Individuals shouldn't see tax. That way the voters don't complain when you need to put it up. If taxation is such an inherent good then why does it need to be hidden from people? If the rate is justifiable the government shouldn't need to hide it. When you consider a democratic society where the government at least indirectly serves the will of the people the idea of the government needing to pull a fast one on the…

"If taxation is such an inherent good then why does it need to be hidden from people?"

It isn't an inherent good. It's just required to reduce demand and release people so the public sector can purchase them with its money.

Without it you would have inflation - or none of the public services we voted for.

The reason you pay tax is that your income is higher than it otherwise would have been without the government spending.

What people who don't like tax forget is that should you eliminate it, the increased income will be eliminated too. But not in a smooth way. Jobs will be decimated, and one of those might be yours.

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

#412

Post by neilwilson »

roenxi wrote: post #55
neilwilson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best tax is one that is imposed on an individual but paid at source by the corporation paying them. Individuals shouldn't see tax. That way the voters don't complain when you need to put it up. Sales tax is similarly a pain - particularly when you have differing rates. At which point we get into the famous is it a cake or a biscuit type cases to decide where the dividing line is.

To invert that: if people understood how much the services being provided to them cost they would not consume them. The goal of government shouldn't be to obscure the cost of government services. The cost should be justified.

That puts the cart before the horse. People voted for them, so they are provided - and the people required to run them removed from the private sector.

To invert that, what exactly are you planning on doing with the people currently in the public service, which the people voted for, that is so much more important than providing the services the people voted for?

It is for the private sector to justify its use of resources, not the public sector. The public sector has a democratic mandate.

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

#413

Post by duped »

frockington1 wrote: post #404
duped wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have a death tax in the US. We have an estate tax that is exempt up to $11 million and can be spread out 15 years for businesses.

The proposed capital gains changes would ensure that most Americans will be targeted. If the cost basis doesn't recent on death many Americans will immediately get hit with taxes. With the top rate being upped to 43%, its gg for anyone who planned on leaving their loved ones money

I mean that's a bad characterization. Most Americans don't have savings to be inherited, so "many Americans" should be quantified first. The gains are only taxed when they are realized, so you don't owe taxes on inheritance - only when you sell the assets. You would not owe at the top rate unless your income (including realized gains) eclipses the threshold.

That's not a death tax. It's an income tax. You don't get out of it by dying.

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

#414

Post by johnday »

TimPC wrote: post #194
johnday wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What claims do you think I have made? All I have said above is that taxation (a) is complicated and (b) has hidden externalities, both of which are obviously correct and appropriate responses to the things being asked.

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

#415

Post by neilwilson »

nly wrote: post #346
aNoob7000 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think paying your state and federal taxes in the United States should be seamless. Your employer should take the taxes out of your paycheck. At the end of the month/year, you should get a statement showing all the taxes you paid. I recently had to update my W4 form at work for tax withholding, and what a pain in the ass to read and decipher. Add to that, and I had to do the same thing for my state taxes. I want to…

Do most Americans have to do their own taxes? It boggles my mind that this is the case.

They do.

The UK PAYE (Pay as You Earn) system has a 1% tax gap[1] compared to 12.9% on income tax and 7% on corporation tax.

It's extraordinarily more efficient to tax at source.

[1]The percentage tax gap is the tax gap pound value as a proportion of theoretical liability, where theoretical liability is defined as the tax gap plus the amount of tax actually received.

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

#416

Post by neilwilson »

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…

" A doctorate in economics might get you a decent way towards understanding the good that taxation provides"

Unlikely. Economics doesn't even understand how the monetary system works, let alone taxation.

Taxation works more like memory garbage collection than anything else. It's a cleaning up process.

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

#417

Post by G3rn0ti »

refurb wrote: post #325
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?

Yeah, it’s an artificial number. It does not reflect the true profitability of MS. As another commenter explained (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27380998) the figure contains money from selling two subsidiaries. That would also explain the steep rise of the profit.

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

#418

Post by G3rn0ti »

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.

Exactly. Corporations as individuals respond to incentives. The cause of this situation is exactly the presence of high corporate taxes in many countries which multinationals can game.

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

#419

Post by G3rn0ti »

rmah wrote: post #230
sbennettmcleish wrote: post #7

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

Microsoft did not even make that much revenue in the 2020 fiscal year. Total global revenues were $143B and total global net income (aka profit) was $44. It was the a very good year for Microsoft. But £220B (apx $310B) in profits is laughable. The reporters might have been looking at the "total assets" line of MSFT's financials, which was $301B at the end of FY2020. But you don't pay tax on total assets. Just specula…

The Guardian is an English newspaper with a political agenda on the left side of the spectrum. So articles like this serve to support a narrative its readers feel comfortable with. Similar to Fox News.

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

#420

Post by de_Selby »

axlee wrote: post #289
G4E wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they do that ? The light tax they require from those entity still benefits them immensily, because those entity choose to pay them there instead of elsewhere. If Ireland introduced more taxes those big corps would move away, so they would actually receive less...

The definition of a parasitic economy. Other countries are well in their rights to pressure Ireland as hard as they can to end this theft.

You seem to have a very strange definition of theft. Other countries are perfectly entitled to do similarly, as Netherlands does.

Why is there not a focus on countries such as Bermuda here? They are the "tax havens" who make this possible in the first place.

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