We had talks outside Lehman Brothers’ old headquarters, expressed our solidarity with USUncut outside the Bank of America who paid $0 in tax last year….
So, err, why did Bank of America pay $0 in tax last year?
Umm, 2010 results:
Bank of America posted a $2.24 billion net loss
2009 results?
income applicable to common shareholders was a net loss of $2.2 billion, or $0.29 per diluted share.
BoA didn\’t pay any corporate income tax because there wasn\’t any corporate income to pay tax on.
Are these uncut people all irredeemably stupid?
“Are these uncut people all irredeemably stupid?”
Are you starting a new series? “Questions to which the answer is ‘yes’.”
Tax Research LLP pays £0 in tax every year
The question answers itself, Tim.
Shooting fish in a barrel.
I get the feeling that emotional, economically illiterates have grabbed the lefty journalists’ imaginations and are being hyped into something special.
Basically, they want to undermine every working rule our society has based on a stupid prejudice. Pay tax when there is no income??? Yeah. Let’s see if I understand this. You are out of a job, have no money and the taxman comes round to say ‘hey, pay up big boy. We want tax’. Like it?
Their heroes (yeah, makes you laugh dunnit?) do the same as everbody else. Avoidance (understood as organising yourself within, I repeat for the ‘hearing challenged’, WITHIN, the rules that the government hands down to pay as little tax as possible) is merely administering your monies correctly. As bloggers are pointing out. You can always pay more. Why don’t you? Because we have discovered you don’t. Maybe many aren’t even tax-payers yet. Wait till you get your first pay packet, kiddies.
Changing the rules (which successive governments have made incredibly complex) requires parliament. And even though I have no faith in our lords and masters, at least they will require things to be fully thought through before changing rules.
Seen from a distance, UKUncut are merely a bunch of ignorant poseurs who want something done about ‘unfairness’. They feel, so they must be right. They are indignant, so they must be right. They care, so they are right.
The rest of us are nasty sh*ts, ‘cos we obviously do not care!
May the Lord help all who live on the good ship UK.
Paying an amout of tax which is unrelated to profit/loss? Sounds like they want a poll tax… but just for businesses, of course.
Don’t forget tax incidence. Even when a business is liable for tax it does not pay any money.
Nil tax ? I don’t think so. IIRC banks can’t reclaim the VAT they pay on all their expense purchases, plus of course they will pay business rates, and Employers NICs. I’m not sure if there are other taxes too.
” Sounds like they want a poll tax… but just for businesses, of course.”
That should say only for the (nasty evil) multinational businesses, but not for the ones we like: the charities, NGOs, unions, the ones saying things we like or doing ‘socially useful stuff’*, etc
“Socially useful stuff” is basically whatever the lefties like
I think they see the whole tax on profits/income thing as some sort of dodge.
Personally though, i think they are a bunch of Far Left loonies and exhibitionists who just hate business, especially American ones.
What is it about these tax obsessed people ?
Why do we pay tax in the first place ? We use it to fund those providing public services. But it can be demonstrated beyond doubt that large numbers of people are receiving tax money for doing very little, or are receiving way too much tax money, or there are too many of them, or the services being provided should not be funded by tax.
So their solution – get some more tax ?!
This is myopia on a grand scale.
Tom Costello, ex Oxbridge “founder” of UKUncut describes himselt as a “playwright”
I can only assume he has yet to make a tax return for any profit he makes from people paying to attend any plays he has written, probably because there aren’t any.
Though I read somewhere he is only an aspiring playwright, as he works as a BBC researcher. Maybe that was incorrect, but no doubt the Tamsin and Jonty faux-levellers who invaded Fortnums will devote much of their future trust-funded wellbeing to paying more tax than they are required to?
Ian, tax isconfiscation of assets from class enemies. Ask any socialist what they prefer – confiscatory tax rates with reduced yield, or lower rates with more money raised, and they will choose the former.
What is really starting to worry me is how violent the language is becoming. There are plenty of explicit threats being made against people openly critical of ukuncut and fellow travellers (and especially those openly supporting the Rally Against Debt), and I know it’s primarily online via social media. But – ukuncut’s language has always been subtly violent e.g. “make them pay” – and we’ve already seen how that turns out for some of their hate figures.
And contrary to ukuncut propaganda, and which the media seems to have forgotten too, is the fact that shops WERE attacked on ukuncut actions many times before March 26th….