Corporate Whinge
Posted by Roger Godsiff, MP for Birmingham, Hall Green, at 10:42, Thu 15 November 2012:
Starbucks – doing you a favour by not making any money out of UK!!
Speaking from Westminster recently, Roger said: “The astonishingly pathetic assertion by Starbucks Finance Chief to MPs that ‘the company makes no profit in Britain’ must rank as the joke of the year.
Despite having 31% of the British market he asserted that Starbucks had only once turned a profit in 15 years despite the company telling it American investors that it was ‘very satisfied with the way its British operation was working!’
So, lucky Starbucks coffee drinkers, just be thankful that when you pay for your next cup of coffee at Starbucks remember you are being subsidised by the company - and not taken for a ride!”
Kraft – or just krafty?
Commenting on the furore swilling around regarding the revelations that companies like Starbucks, Amazon, Google and Facebook have paid just £30 million in Corporation Tax in the UK on sales of £3.1 billion over the last four years Roger said recently: “ I wrote to Kraft, who took over Cadbury’s, to ask how much Corporation Tax they had paid. As you can imagine they were extremely guarded over their figures and said that they paid Corporation Tax ‘based on the laws of the countries in which we operate including the UK’.
They also said ‘like most global businesses we pay most of our Corporation Tax in the countries where we have headquarters’. Kraft is not headquartered in the UK and, neither for that matter, was Cadbury’s who were headquartered in Switzerland and operated through numerous different companies based in all parts of the world. Of course Kraft trumpet that they employ 5,500 people in the UK and allegedly contribute £272 million to the local economy in Birmingham but the fact remains that Kraft pays far less in Corporation Tax on the profits it makes in the UK and the number of people it employs in this country is less than Cadburys employed – so what has been the benefit to Birmingham and the United Kingdom economy of the acquisition of Cadburys by Kraft.”
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Posted by Roger Groves, 11:07, Thu 15 November 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
These issues with regard to non-payment of tax by big corporations is nothing new, it's was going on when Labour was in power for over 10yrs, nothing was done then and I doubt very much if anything will be done now. It would appear that because our MP's are slaves to these big corporations they are pushing the problem out to us hard working public figures, using the "name & shame" approach to drive holes in the brand reputation. You just need to close the tax loopholes to stop all this tax fiddling. However, this is not going to happen because we read every day now about our loyal, hardworking, honest MP's still fiddling their expenses, not paying them back, not being punished, and now trying to appoint these "bent" MP's to the board to manage the expense procedures!! If you can't trust the people elected to make the laws that what is the point???
Posted by Mohammed Hemraj, 11:29, Thu 15 November 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
What the corporation is doing is tax avoidance which is legal and not tax evasion which is illegal. These corporations employ experts who tell them how to minimise paying tax. It is for the British government to close this loophole.
Posted by Tahir Mahmood, 15:27, Thu 15 November 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
Once more the UK is seen as a soft spot - What will our great HMRC or the government do? I suppose nothing and go after smaller companies who cannot afford to find loopholes in the system. NAME AND SHAME CAMPAIGN IS CALLED FOR.
Posted by abid hussain, 20:43, Thu 15 November 2012: (Is this post abusive?) #
All these companies are Zionist enterprises the Muslims in this country all know that,the question is that how much money do these companies pay to aipac the Zionist lobby who pay for Israelis arms and ammunition to fight the innocent Muslims in Palestine and gaza.as I run a small business I always pay my taxes,the British government is hard on small businesses in reality,look at what's happening at our high streets retail outlets closing down and high streets becoming ghost towns,the government needs to abolish business rates for small to medium sized businesses,then there is a chance for recovery on the high street.