Great news for Billionaire Tax-dodging multinationals

[JohnD]

Pret a Manger?

2016 UK profit before tax: £86m
UK tax paid in 2016: £5.6m

"Pret A Manger, unlike Caffe Nero, has paid some UK tax in its last accounts – which despite being called “Pret A Manger (Europe) Limited” cover its UK sales, on which it made more than £80 million of profit. However, the company did manage to reduce its tax bill somewhat by claiming “group relief”, which allows it to offset losses in other parts of its owners’ business against Pret’s tax bill, reducing it from around £17 million in theory to just over £5m in practice."

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/costa-starbuck-coffee-tax/

 

[JohnD]

tax, bread, side, buttered.

 

[JohnD]

"Apple to pay hundreds of millions of euros in French back-taxes"

"Tech giant handed bill by Paris after audit covering past decade"

https://www.ft.com/content/f04191e0-296a-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7

"French authorities have ordered Apple to pay additional taxes believed to run into hundreds of millions of euros, following an examination of the US tech group’s operations in the country over the past decade.

The audit of Apple’s business in France, dating back to 2008, comes a year after the iPhone maker was forced to pay an extra £136m in taxes in the UK, following a similar probe.

European governments have been grappling with how to extract more tax from US tech companies, many of whom choose to base their operations in low-tax countries such as Ireland."

Well that's nice.

"France has been a vocal proponent of introducing a wide-ranging pan-European digital tax on tech companies. Following disagreements between member states on this issue, the French government is working on a new domestic tax that will be levied on big international tech groups such as Apple, Google and Facebook.

It will apply to all digital service providers with a turnover in this line of business of more than €750m worldwide and €25m in France. It will be retroactive to 1 January 2019 and is expected to generate around €500m in revenue for France. The legislation is expected to be put to a parliamentary vote at the end of this month."

 

[Notch7]

"France has been a vocal proponent of introducing a wide-ranging pan-European digital tax on tech companies.

Paris has seen a huge increase in super rich people moving in......something to do with low tax.

Forget Mauritius or Singapore, Paris is the new tax haven. One of the benefits of being a republic with a rich elite president

 

[JohnD]

Superrich want to live in a place with a stable society, reliable laws, fairly honest police force; good schools; a health service and public health so your domestic staff are unlikely to give you serious diseases; where your children are unlikely to be kidnapped by organised crime and there are enough couturiers, bijouteries, opera houses and exclusive restaurants to keep your wife and mistress happy.

And it has to be a place not run by gangsters who might seize your wealth and throw you into jail or assassinate you.

There are a limited number of such places in the world. Russia is not one of them.

 

[Vinty]

The EU ordered the Irish Government to collect £13billion in back taxes from Apple and the Irish government then took the EU to court to prevent them from forcing Ireland to collect the £13billion , this is and indication of how corrupt some EU states are.
The Irish had been adding Apples European revenues to their GDP yet Apple doesn't have a single outlet in Ireland apart from a small low tech factory in Cork.
The Apple scam is the tip of the iceberg in Ireland, this is why among other things people want out of the EU.

 

[JohnD]

The Apple scam is the tip of the iceberg in Ireland

And the EU is making an attempt, and using such powers as are granted to it by its contituent nations, to rein in this scam that the Irish government is complicit in.

Some people want to resign from the EU so there will be no-one willing and able to unite against scams by billionaires and multinationals.

The EU can do it.

 

[Notch7]

Superrich want to live in a place with a stable society, reliable laws, fairly honest police force; good schools; a health service and public health so your domestic staff are unlikely to give you serious diseases; where your children are unlikely to be kidnapped by organised crime and there are enough couturiers, bijouteries, opera houses and exclusive restaurants to keep your wife and mistress happy.

And it has to be a place not run by gangsters who might seize your wealth and throw you into jail or assassinate you.

There are a limited number of such places in the world. Russia is not one of them.

Wrong

The super rich are moving to Paris for one reason only.....lower tax than elsewhere.

 

[durhamplumber]

tax, bread, side, buttered.

Very wise.

 

[durhamplumber]

And the EU is making an attempt, and using such powers as are granted to it by its contituent nations, to rein in this scam that the Irish government is complicit in.

Some people want to resign from the EU so there will be no-one willing and able to unite against scams by billionaires and multinationals.

The EU can do it.

EU have not managed it in 50 years.

 

[jasonzyx]

Paris has seen a huge increase in super rich people moving in......something to do with low tax.

Forget Mauritius or Singapore, Paris is the new tax haven. One of the benefits of being a republic with a rich elite president

Wrong

The super rich are moving to Paris for one reason only.....lower tax than elsewhere.

https://www.compareyourcountry.org/taxing-wages

 

[ellal]

Major tobacco companies pay almost no UK corporation tax despite massive profits

"By moving profits overseas, the companies are leaving UK taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions to deal with smoking-related problems."

Funnily enough...

"Conservative and DUP MPs have been criticised for hosting a string of receptions, lunches and dinners in parliament for tobacco companies."

 

[JohnD]

The super rich are moving to Paris for one reason only.....lower tax than elsewhere.

wrong, of course.

But since the social, political and economic damage arising from the Brexit fiasco, superrich are less keen on London than they used to be.

 

[JohnD]

https://www.ft.com/content/4451d34a-ac64-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2

"For the longest time, multinational corporations have been allowed to get away with intelligence-insulting tax wheezes, which were no less obnoxious for being perfectly legal. (Remember the funny bit of Irish tax law that allowed tech companies to incorporate subsidiaries in Ireland that were residents of nowhere for tax purposes?) We were also told that fixing the taxation of capital in an era of globalisation could only work if everyone agreed on it — and the political establishment across the western world suggested that such agreement would be very hard to achieve.

So when the French government simply decided to go ahead and tax the tech giants, and Spain and the UK announce their intention to follow suit, their citizens are entitled to react by saying: “Now you tell us?” It turns out that when a state runs out of patience — Paris says it will remove its tax once there is a satisfactory international agreement — it has more power than many used to think."

 

[JohnD]

https://www.ft.com/content/4451d34a-ac64-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2



"When the finance ministers of the world’s seven largest rich economies met in Chantilly, France last week, they had a tense discussion about reforming multinational corporate taxation. US officials were peeved at the French hosts for enacting a national sales tax on the local business of global tech groups such as Google and Facebook"

"Whether Americans are right to see the unilateral tax move as a raid on their companies, it has clearly added impetus to G7 efforts to reform international tax rules.

The obvious lesson here is that one country going it alone can force otherwise elusive co-operation."