So, the Murphaloon has been arguing that companies should be paying their tax where the sales are, because that’s where the value is created. So along comes someone who says that companies should pay tax where their sales are:
People often wonder why I criticise the Institute for Fiscal Studies for right wing fundamentalism, as I have done on this blog, quite often. The reason is that it is right-wing and fundamentalist, however good its analyses might be when it comes to budgets, spending reviews and so on.
Yup, agreeing with Ritchie is now, candidly, right wing neoliberal sophistry.
I’m confused. Suppose you have a good that is produced in Zambia with final destination sale in the UK, I’d have thought Murph would have been arguing for profits to be recognised in Zambia and taxed there?
In addition: “The reverse is true, of course with regard to taxes on shareholders – which despite IFS claims is exactly what corporation tax is now.”
Wasn’t it only last week that corporation tax is a tax on the company in its own right rather than shareholders?
Yes yes, that’s true in the morning, but what about after lunch?
I’ve often thought that Monaco must be hoping like crazy that this policy is brought in.
They make bugger all but they must buy loads of stuff, so think of all the tax they’d get under the Murphaloon’s ‘tax profits where the customer is” idea.
Expecting rationality from that particular source is sure to disappoint. Interested to see a link – have you figured out a way for it not to benefit the target?
Right wing and fundamentalist, but not neo-liberal? Astonished!
LE,
He doesn’t want profits taxed where the sale is made or where the company is based, he wants profits taxed where the sale is made AND where the company is based AND in UK just for good measure, in case the first 2 options aren’t successful.
I was a bit baffled to read an article by Simon Jenkins just now about the Pfizer deal.
He complains that it’s tax avoidance, and goes on to say that companies should be taxed where they do business, not because of where their HQ is.
Which is odd, because so far as I can tell the whole point is that the move is intended precisely to put the new group into the position he suggests, and to take it out of being taxed in the US simply because their HQ is there.
It all smacks of the Lloyds Bank decision, where the fundamental idea seems to be that simply paying attention to your tax bill means you deserve to pay more, regardless of the facts or what your tax bill currently is.
I actually agree with his proposition. We should levy a 20% tax on the sale of all goods & services in the UK. This could raise some £110bn a year.
Whoops, should have actually read his blog first. He already twigged that it’s the same as VAT.
Help me out here, guys. I’m just sitting at my computer in the UK and I’ve ordered some merchandise from a business with a US HQ; using a server farm in Iceland (lots of cheap, green leccy); delivered from a warehouse in Poland; and invoiced in Dublin. Where exactly has the profit (if any) been generated?
Andrew M – only it’s not the same as VAT. The BBC report says it’s a bit like VAT, as it’s based on destination (which VAT is, to an extent), and he’s then gone on to deduce that as it’s identical to VAT it’s a bad thing.
He’s then gone on to state that although this sort of CT has the same relation to VAT as Unitary Tax does, Unitary Tax is in fact nothing like VAT.
He has then gone on to show that this sort of CT probably means VAT anyway, as the IFS has on other occasions talked about preferring VAT to CT.
And then he’s topped all that off by saying that this is all his assumptions as he doesn’t know what the lecture is to be about.
I feel crushed 🙁
@Chris Miller
Anyone asking that sort of question is a neo-liberal troll on the far right. Candidly, I hope HMRC are watching this blog so they can track you down and issue back assessments for the past 6 years. As my good friend Margaret Hodge says, civil society will not put up with blatant tax evaders like you and the starving of our public services (like the salaries of part time GPs) that you and your ilk cause.
Where are you living Tim?
Chris…the common sense answer would be that the value has probably been created in the US. But then you run into tax law and the supply chain has to be very careful about whether it has created taxable presences/permanent establishments in the various countries. EG did the Polish warehouse deliver to an establishment of supply co US based in the UK, mor maybe in Ireland? That sort of thing. Was the Polish warehouse an overseas branch of supply co US?
where are you living oldgreenfascist?
Tim lives in Portugal, as he has said on many occasions. Pay attention at the back.
Andrew M said:
“Whoops, should have actually read his blog first”
I wouldn’t bother.
It’s interesting that he claims to have invented country by country reporting in a briefing/assessment related to raw materials/metals where the point seems to be to recognise that the source of the material (especially developing countries) not receiving their fair share of tax on profits.
Now country by country reporting seems to be about the country where the sale was made not receiving its ‘fair’ share of the tax on profits.
It would seem that he thinks that making it fair means increasing the tax take not redistributing the existing tax take.
I’ve pointed out to him that Starbucks does country by country reporting on sales and taxable profit so why isn’t he praising their approach. As to why country by country reporting won’t just turn, say , Googles reporting from reallocating sales to reallocating costs to achieve the same result he just trots out the old ‘it’s different’ line.
Tin foil hat time methinks – what a tool? And no ‘Arny Old Iron’ on here to defend him and attack Tim – what is the world coming to?
VP it is one to many volte face for even the loyal Arny to support. He is probably too busy with his rescue kittens, anyway.
too
Eddy:Tim told me he is resident in the UK when I accused him of being resident abroad.
Diogenes: the UK.
The old green fascist, do you distinguish between resident, and ordinarily resident?
@BraveFart
Now you’ve done it – gone and got me started on Margaret Hoxha. Whose family firm – the global steel traders Stemcor – paid almost no tax on a turnover of around $10 billion (for the perfectly legitimate reason that they made very little profit). Yet she still bangs on about the evils of Amazon etc ‘not paying their fair share’. Which leaves only two possibilities:
(a) she’s really as thick as pigshit (well, she did get a third from LSE); or
(b) she thinks we must all be thick as pigshit (which, as Tim points out, is true by definition for 20% of the population).
Chris Miller try getting the likes of Murph or soapy Jo Maugham to highlight that…..
No, I haven’t. Stop lying.
I have claimed that I am on the voting roll, which when I’ve claimed it has been true. That’s not the same as being tax resident tho’.
And the last person who claimed that I was not on the voting roll, that sort of resident, ah, well, yes, I do recall who that was.
Lefty that’s at work!
“This proposal, most closely associated with Prof Michael Devereux of the Oxford Centre for Business…”
Funny Richard, I’ve always most closely associated it with you and Sol Picciotto.
Luis Enrique
Yes, you would think that wouldn’t you.
btw, great win at the weekend.
Tim, I didn’t ask if you were tax resident. I said that you are resident outside the UK. You said you were not.
So to sop this escalating, answer the question where are you now living and how long have you been living there?
I have never claimed that you were not on the voting roll.
I am not lying.
the old green fascist…no but you are a fucking boring old green fascist like all old green fascists…in fact like all fascists of any variety…just fuck off the planet and leave human beings to live in peace without fascist shits bothering them at all hours just because they need more money to beat up some Jews
Sorry, couldn’t read the linked page. “Avast Shield has blocked this page: security certificate expired or suspect”
Funny, I rather tend to associate Murphy with that other Uber Loon Prem Sikka.
Tax’s Laurel and Hardy
Actually, a politician in France once said that only 6% of people were not stupid, and that therefore it was not worth going after them.
So he was concentrating his campaigning on the 96% of “cons” and pander to them. I guess he had a point since he had been re-elected for years.
To no one’s surprise, he was a socialist.
Obviously, it would be 94%…
Depends which side of the line you are…
“the old green fascist…no but you are a fucking boring old green fascist like all old green fascists…in fact like all fascists of any variety…just fuck off the planet and leave human beings to live in peace without fascist shits bothering them at all hours just because they need more money to beat up some Jews”
Thing is, half of the word output on here consists of pontificating about the minutiae of Murphy’s life looking for any leverage to be vile; his wife, her health, his health, his shed, and about a lot of imagining Murphy in various states of excitement – which is just weird.
Someone asks a pertinent question about Worstall’s residency status, pertinent because he likes to deride the UK at every opportunity, and he likes to do so from somewhere else. He doesn’t have the balls to stand up in front of a crowd and make himself accountable for his opinions.
What a patriot.
I have actually run in a national election in the UK. that’s standing up ion front of a crowd and making myself accountable for my opinions, isn’t it?
According to folklore, actor James Woods has an IQ of 180.
Oops, sorry commented in wrong thread
@Arnald
And much of your outpourings on here are a one-man crusade defending Murphy, which is even weirder.
But not as weird as the time you ran off to tip Murphy off about people posting on Murphy’s site using ironic names.
Which was hilarious because the man whom you defend was so dense he posted your post even though you asked him not to.
The blogging equivalent of the curtain being whisked back to reveal you kneeling in front of Murphy giving him a blow job.
Haha.
pffft. a failed politician. A failed euro one at that! Surely there can be no bigger shame on this blog, where politicians are scum, failures are ridiculed and the EU is your own personal nemesis.
AndrewC
No, not really when you think about it. Posters on here actually visualise Murphy frotting and frothing and wanking and having blow jobs…I mean I know that’s par for the course for Mr Ecks, but compared to that giving a heads-up on such obvious and childish usernames, it’s dangerously close to being slash fiction…
And if we’re playing the “blogging equivalent” game, your response is the blogging equivalent of getting your dog to have a shit on your keyboard.
And still we don’ t know where Tim lives!