The scale of corporation tax Amazon has avoided in Britain is well known,
No, the claims are well known. But that’s due to fools believing idiots like Spud.
And whether we are talking about the private equity funds that extracted huge sums from water utilities while avoiding the costs of their pollution, or the mistreatment of workers in warehouses or the fashion supply chain, tax dodgers in the Channel Islands or any number of other examples,
Just the usual fool beliefs then, eh?
You can’t expect a journalist to get everything right, can you? But the thesis of article seems pretty sound. That there are organisations both in the public & private sector who are benefiting from arrangements they have with individuals coming to the country whilst the arising costs resulting from the arrangements end up dumped on the taxpayer. Student visas being a a fine example. Mostly they just seem a back door to gaining right of residence & thus to various benefits. And whatever Amazon’s taxpaying arrangements, employing immigrants on minimum wage is going to produce a significant net cost to the country as a whole.
As Jim often says, whist the benefits of globalisation may be gained by the few the costs are borne by the many.
What people tend to forget about is that a water company cannot simply spend money and upgrade infrastructure.or even create new infrastructure. First the water company has to put a proposal to OFWAT and get their approval. There is a web page on OFWATs website that discusses this and OFWAT are proud of the fact that they have refused the go ahead of projects. In some cases they have approved the project provided the costs are cut.
it made me wonder just how much of the recent sewage dumping woes are really the fault of the water companies and the share holders and how much has been cause by OFWAT preventing the water companies making the necessary investments in infrastructure.
This guy is standing for Parliament isn’t he (conservative, cough cough)?
Nick is in no way a journalist. He was a political adviser to Theresa May, the weirdo Home Secretary who, for some reason, was made PM. That fact sums up his abilities to pretend to function like a human being…
BIS,
The problem is that he’s complaining about companies that are simply following the rules, doing legal things, rather than government (which he was an advisor to). It’s a childish perspective on the world that people should just behave nicely (according to your perspective on what “nicely” is) rather than the reality that people are going to exploit a situation unless you bring violence against them for doing it.
If you let universities bring hundreds of thousands of students in, and those students meet the requirement set by government, they’re going to do it. They’re going to fill their coffers with cash. Amazon are going to pay as little tax as legally possible because that’s what a business does. The people subcontracting at Uber sound like they are breaking a law, but in the absence of any policing of it, the law might as well not exist.
The ultimate problem is government. Government controls who gets visas. It is government that is supposed to stop people on tourist visas from working. It is government that is supposed to deport people that overstay. This is fundamental stuff and it fails at it. This article should be about that. “Why did My Tory Mates and I Fail on Immigration”. Because Timothy was part of that. He got Theresa May into power. And what did she do? She drove a load of vans around.
“As Jim often says, whist the benefits of globalisation may be gained by the few the costs are borne by the many.”
Thats not exactly my argument. My point is that the benefits of globalisation are spread very thinly over everyone, but the detriments are concentrated on a specific proportion of the population. A proportion that is constantly growing, as more and more production is offshored, and could start to grow exponentially if AI is allowed to replace admin and information manipulation type jobs in coming years. And its not sustainable for a society to have an economic apartheid like that, where a significant section of society is kept at a subsistence level via welfare/UBI type payments while the rest steam ahead in lives of relative opulence. Eventually the subsistence masses will get to a level that they rise up and overthrow the gilded elites above. Hopefully via the ballot box, but as we see the gilded elites are already trying to make that impossible with their ‘disinformation’ laws, control of the internet and criminalisation of anything that opposes their world view, so violent revolution may be all that remains for them to effect change.
Tomothy was a close advisor to Treason May and her near miss at the 2017 election was largely down to his ideas.
Oh and her uselessness.
If they’re not a UK corporation, why should they be paying any UK corporation tax?
Sean O’Connor,
Amazon UK Services Ltd is. But the thing is, they did various things (like paying employees shares) that meant they didn’t make a profit some years. Booking some it through Luxembourg or Ireland (I forget the exact details).
Water companies aren’t owned by private equity funds. One is owned by an infrastructure fund (no, not the same) and another is owned by a Hong Kong investment company in which a PE firm has a minority stake. The remaining eight are owned essentially by end investors (pension funds, sovereign wealth funds etc)
Errr…. Amazon is an American company, so should be paying American corporation tax.
“To boost the British economy I’d tax all foreigners living abroad”
That used to be a joke. Now it’s being advocated as actual policy. MADNESS!
Where Thames Water went awry was when Macquarie took it over. They are the ones accused of cash stripping the company, saddling it with debt and then flogging it to a load of unsuspecting Canuck teachers.
Whether the accusation is true is not for me to say, but now it us assumed by the Timothies of this world that all privatised industries work this way.
Almost all the OFTWAT board live in the Thames Water catchment area. They have consistently voted to suppress TW water prices below the local cost of wages and in particular below the south east regional costs of accommodation and land.
My apologies Jim. But I think we’re looking at the same thing from opposite directions. With people globalisation – ie, “immigration is always a benefit” etc – it’s the few who gain whilst the majority pay.
And as others have said. This is the result of intentional government policy. One can’t really blame the beneficiaries for taking advantage of it.
Western Bloke,
That’s really my point though. They’ll compare Amazon Corp’s revenue and profit with what Amazon Services Ltd ultimately pays in corporation tax. I run a successful UK games Ltd company and make most of my sales in the US, but I’ve no plans to do what retarded tax justice idiots would have me do and pay any corporation tax in America.
“ The scale of corporation tax Amazon has avoided in Britain is well known,”
As the much missed Raedwald used to point out: immigration policy is not the fault of immigrants. Similarly, tax policy is not the fault of Big Business.
“Similarly, tax policy is not the fault of Big Business.”
It probably is tho. Big Government and Big Business are two cheeks of the same arse. They need each other, and rely on each other, and work on behalf of each other. So BB gets the tax laws it wants, and a high regulation economy that creates nice little oligopolies for them to mine, and BG gets the taxes and power over the economy it wants. Neither want the little man getting in the way, either as grit in the bureaucratic machine or as competition.
I agree, Jim, but that doesn’t make the policy the fault of big business, that still lies with politicians.
Bravefart: this bloke has indeed got a safe Conservative seat.
At the next election, the good folk of West Suffolk will lose Matt Hancock and gain Nick Timothy.
Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the local Conservatives said: ‘hold our beer’.