29-10-2015, 10:59 AM
(28-10-2015, 04:34 PM)Dum-Dum Wrote: That corporate tax avoidance malarkey is a daft lefty red herring.
All these big companies do not need to have UK head offices, they could trade from any tax haven in the world they like and sadly if you start making them pay proper tax they will just up sticks and bugger off somewhere cheaper (IIRC google did this). If these companies all up sticks then suddenly you have thousands possibly millions of unemployed people who aren't paying hundreds of pounds a month each into the system. Consider facebook probably employs 1000 staff on an average of £60k/pa thats around £25k/pa per employee in income tax or £25,000,000 into the UK economy and that's before you include the tax on them spending any of that money.
IIRC they are required to have some kind of office in the EU for tax purposes, which is why most operate a post box is Ireland.
They usually have something going on with the Cayman Islands as well.
They can't fully up sticks and move to bonga bonga land because they still need an army of very skilled individuals working for their company.
You've also got to consider the likes of Starbucks, who quite obviously can't leave but still abuse the shit out of the tax system.