Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–449 of 449 posts

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#441

Post by collyw »

afsina wrote: post #416
collyw wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when was it tried?

Well, the ones tried were close enough. Soviets and the all eastern block, Cuba, Cambodia, China, North Korea. They all contained communist ideas such as common ownership, abolishing private property, central planning, and somewhat classless society. Apparently event the theory does not hold much weight as almost all collapsed or converted to some form of nationalist totalitarian regime. Perhaps once robots do all ou…

All of those that you mentioned were totalitarian regimes, hence no true communism (as described by Marx) has been tried.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#442

Post by collyw »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #430
collyw wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it when an honest question gets downvoted on here.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smarmy

coming from someone who creates a throwaway account to post that link.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#443

Post by afsina »

collyw wrote: post #441
afsina wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the ones tried were close enough. Soviets and the all eastern block, Cuba, Cambodia, China, North Korea. They all contained communist ideas such as common ownership, abolishing private property, central planning, and somewhat classless society. Apparently event the theory does not hold much weight as almost all collapsed or converted to some form of nationalist totalitarian regime. Perhaps once robots do all ou…

All of those that you mentioned were totalitarian regimes, hence no true communism (as described by Marx) has been tried.

Perhaps totalitarianism is the natural end result of the vague Marxian communism? They definitely tried to be communist after all.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#444

Post by tomelders »

bagacrap wrote: post #433
tomelders wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I utterly reject this argument > 362 Facebook staff on an average salary of say £65,000 will contribute at least £7,230,696.60 in taxes and NI to HMRC. Let's also not pretend that £65,000 is the average salary at Facebook UK, it's likely much higher. First of all, that's Facebook employees paying tax. Not Facebook. That's their money that they are taxed on and they pay it. Secondly, no one is asking for Facebook to p…

> That's their money that they are taxed on and they pay it. The only reason Facebook doesn't have to pay taxes on that money is because they gave it to their employees (so it counts against profit). The money comes from FB profits, briefly goes to the employees, then to the government. Hence, the government is getting a cut of the money FB is making. What's the problem?

The reason they paid such low corporation tax is because they funnelled that money into a country where they dont pay tax as a business expense. Im not sure what Facebooks specific set up is, but it will be something like this.

Facebook luxembourg provides a license for Facebook UK to use the facebook logo. The fee for that license just happens to coincide with all the profits Facebook UK made this year.

It's a fictional cost, and totally legal. But its still dirt bag behaviour.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#445

Post by Marazan »

geodel wrote: post #235
coldtea wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they use every trick in the book not to, ending up paying less than your local frozen yogurt place (exaggerating a little, but still).

So the problem is existence of the book of tricks. Apple did not write it.

Yes they did. they literally negotiated a deal with the Irish government to get the tax structure they wanted for their European operations.

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#447

Post by dpatru »

SuddsMcDuff wrote: post #213
dpatru wrote: post #113

In terms of providing social value, Facebook employees far surpass any government's employees. In just a few years Facebook has revolutionized how people connect with each other, whereas governments have, in general, barely been able to maintain the accomplishments of previous generations. This despite the fact that government generally force people to pay about one fifth of their labor, whereas Facebook offers its s…

You're taking a highly subjective view and presenting it as fact. That Facebook is a "socially beneficial organization" is extremely debatable. I would argue that Facebook has actually had a detrimental effect on social cohesion.

Facebook offers free services to ordinary people to help them stay in touch with their friends. It also offers a paid services to businesses to help them communicate to actual and potential customers. Anyone who uses Facebook can stop at any time. People use Facebook by choice.

In contrast, governments are violent organizations specialize in coercion. Governments extract their revenue by force or threat of force and use their revenue to fund institutions and projects that people would not pay for voluntarily. Governments maintain power by direct force (police and military), by deceit and misinformation (control of the money supply, compulsory education), by monopolizing necessary institutions and services (dispute resolution, security), and by appealing to people's greed and envy. It is nearly impossible to opt out of government services, especially in the sense of not paying for them (taxes).

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#448

Post by orbifold »

exDM69 wrote: post #159
s_dev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think they'd pay more or less tax in Dublin compared to £5k? Irelands 12.5% seems very reasonable considering its so close to its effective rate. France, Britain and Germany all allow massive write offs and loop holes that mean their effective rate is multiples lower than their stated corporate tax rate and this story will be forgotten by the Brits, Germans and French who'll turn around and repeat their condem…

> Irelands 12.5% seems very reasonable considering its so close to its effective rate. Very little of the actual profits of Facebook are actually subject to the 12.5% corporate tax of Ireland. In a European corporate tax evasion scheme such as Facebook's, there's typically four to five legal entities in two or three countries. The branch making the actual profits (e.g. Facebook UK) pays their profits as "license fees…

Since this is well known, I'm really curious how a typical conversation about this scheme in one of the other EU countries looks like. Typical politicians are usually somewhat in the pockets of industry by getting payed for speaking engagements etc, but shouldn't they at least realize that it isn't really in the interest of their own country to let this happen?

Re: Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

#449

Post by bluecalm »

asuffield wrote: post #414
bluecalm wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth tax is obviously (I think!) the best kind of tax but the problem with it is it's hard to collect (you would need to assess wealth of everyone and that is a problem).

Please consider what kind of behaviour you would encourage. If wealth erodes every year then this strongly disincentives long term thinking and rewards business ventures which give quick cash and then burn out, like strip mining, and punishes planning for the future like pensions. You want your tax system to reward long term thinking, not punish it.

I don't understand why it would encourage what you are predicting. If you "quickly cash out and burn" then you pay a tax on it as well. My argument for wealth tax is that people with most wealth are the ones with the strongest interest to keep the country stable and nice place to live in.
Post reply on HN