Taxpayers want the UK to increase levies on giant global technology companies such as Facebook owner Meta, Google and Amazon, a survey of Britons’ attitudes on corporate taxes suggests.
The polling released on Monday by the Fair Tax Foundation – abody providing businesses with certification around responsible tax conduct – found that 67% of respondents believe that the government should charge higher digital services taxes on multinational technology groups “to increase their overall tax contribution in the UK”.
Given that they cannot get anyone to sign up for the Fair Tax certificate they’ve decided to branch out.
Yeah, someone who gives me access to a world of knowledge, information and communication for nothing except the ability to sling ads at me, that person deserves to be taxed to support government services which don’t deliver anything or are actively trying to kill me and mine.
…
Adam Smith said something like, the good master of a household should never make for himself what he can more cheaply buy. Probably thinking about people who knitted their own clothes or made their own furniture at home. Commies change one word ‘buy’ to ‘steal’.
“67% of respondents”
Totally unbiased sample there.
Or some very, very leading questions..
‘Woke’ members of ‘woke’ organisation support ‘woke’ policy ideas. News at 11.
67% – ‘we asked three people, and two said yes’?
Starmer has gone! According to the BBC, saying “Every decision he says he has taken has been about “putting the country I love first”.”
Doesn’t say which country that is!
Very good!
Not good, because “Andy” will be worse…?
It’s any country other than the UK. His name will certainly for me, live in infamy as the worst leader the country has ever had. Could Burnham be any worse?
Tragically, yes…
Yes. He’s a Scouser.
Saw a blurb that said he said his greatest achievement was getting Labour elected.
I thought it was the Tories that got Labour elected.
Here’s to hoping Miliband vanishes too.
He could end up as the effing Chancellor!!!
Trump announced Starmer’s departure last night, without consulting Starmer.
Orange emperor dismisses an underperforming regional governor.
Reform want a General Election. They won’t get one but there really ought to be one. Burnham (is there going to be anyone else?) really has no mandate, not even being an MP for a long rime until recently.
But… But…
Starmer and Rayner demanded elections when the Tories changed leader. Will Starmer not call one ? Will Angela not demand one ?
Shirley they are not hypocrites.
Or in Lammy and Abbot’s cases hippo-crits.
Reform may say they want an election but after the debacle of Robert Kenyon they should be secretly hoping there isn’t one so they can get their selection process sorted out.
They put up a real person versus a plastic bubble-dwelling carpetbagger. Kenyon was right in his ten-years-past opinions. And women do use abortion for contraception purposes. Of course they do or they would have babies. Unless you believe that two doctors examine the woman and only sign off the abortion if her health is in danger?
I fear Reform is not ready for an election yet. Candidate selection needs improving, policy needs refining, messaging needs sharpening…etc.
That’s why Burnham wants to go for it. He thinks he can wipe the floor with them.
It is also, I suspect, why Nige is laying down the gauntlet – so that Burnham feels he has to decline or be accused of dancing to Nige’s tune.
Shrewd observation…
Oh god, does this mean that lamebrain Lammy is temporarily in charge?
No, TTK is still PM until Burnham’s ‘coronation’. We are spared Lammy…
Maybe there is a God after all.
It seems to me that these global digital services companies should simply remove their UK bases of operations. I’m not exactly sure why Google needs fancy offices in Kings Cross. Just operate out of the US (or wherever) outside of UK jurisdiction and leave it to HM Gov. to restrict citizens access to things they don’t like by building a Great Internet Wall of Twat (subject to response from US gov).
See also Ofcom trying to fine 4Chan and getting pictures of hamsters in reply.
I can’t tell whether OfCommie are serious or just going through the motions because they have to legally. They certainly can’t expect to get any fines from 4Chan, and a US court would laugh at them if they tried that route.
I assume British businesses want to buy ads on e.g. Facebook, so there’s money coming from there.
I don’t know the business basis for 4chan.
Yarp, and no doubt the Facebook types want the money. But UK businesses can buy things in the US market. No doubt it’s more efficient for those companies to sell here or they woukdn’t do it. But if HM Gov. taxes them more and moar and starts dicking them around with “safety” restrictions . . . adios.
We know it’s not about maximising tax take because when Google UK decided to give out its UK profit as bonuses rather than pay tax and repatriate the rest, the great and the good complained about tax avoidance, even though the treasury took a higher percentage directly and the rest was staying
I’m not exactly sure why Google needs fancy offices in Kings Cross.
I suspect it’s so they can winkle their way into government and the public sector. They certainly don’t need it for ordinary commercial purposes.
My experience is that that civil servants do like going to swanky offices and TBF who would let a multi £m+ contract to a company that was in dingie offices?
It’s also my experience that companies like Google have been persuaded by HR types that they need swanky offices to attract top talent.
They also need somewhere to house their lobbyists.
The business and legal services companies in the City – I’ve no experience of City finance – are there for networking, recruitment and lobbying for work. Remote working doesn’t cut it.
I’m enough of a Red Neck that I’d react to threats by just turning off the service.
Then tell UK I want £100,000,000,000, ownership of BBC, and more, to turn it back on. In fact, I’d time it in the second week of Burnham’s #10 residency. Burnham would be PM one week. Period.
Labour faces an existential threat by harassing American tech giants. You can open the borders to third world invaders, but killing Facebook, Google and Amazon will get #10 burned to the ground.
You wish!
“I’m not exactly sure why Google needs fancy offices in Kings Cross. ”
Advertising sales, I thought, which probably is something that works better with local knowledge.
StreetWise Professor has a good piece on the idiocy of wealth taxes, using Musk’s ‘wealth’ as an example. Do Piketty et al really think that the $1Tn is an enormous box full of Benjamins sitting somewhere in Hawthorn, CA?
I think that’s exactly what they’re thinking. At least it’s the basis for all those twits saying things like “Musk could buy everyone in the world a latte and an avocado toast and still have leftover”.
Whereas the $1Tn is an extrapolation on the basis of what a small percentage of the company changing hands sold for. The rest isn’t for sale.
So this week’s policy is to tax where the activity takes place. Was it last week when it was tax where the ownership is? I can never keep up.
But isn’t the location of the trading activity for most of these companies – the sale of adverts – in Ireland?
Lefties get all excited at the prospect of ‘taxing where the profits are made’. They picture evil companies like Dell Computers selling a laptop to someone in the UK and think we should get to tax those profits.
Pointing out that this would mean any UK company selling abroad would then be taxed abroad causes confusion.
In my experience, lefties are very easily confused.
Citation required. Did they verify that those surveyed were taxpayers? Did they earn more than the £40k-odd required to be a net taxpayer?
Is it really only £40k-odd?
I’d have thought that would have gone up a bit by now, not just with inflation but because of, ah “demographic changes” and idle cunts pretending to be nutters.
Norman, those would bring the ‘income needed to be a net taxpayer’ figure down, not up.
As the government spends more and more on non-workers (or those with very low incomes), and is hitting the limit on how much it can gouge out of high incomes it needs to get more and more from those on middle incomes.
(e.g. NI hikes, not indexing higher rate or inheritance tax thresholds, above-inflation council tax rises …)
Simultaneously it spends less on those with middling incomes, because it needs all its money for the increasing numbers on no or very low incomes.
(e.g. means-testing the winter fuel payment)
So with those on middle incomes paying more in taxes, but getting less from the government, the income level at which you become a net taxpayer comes down.
(unless you’re riding the system – lots of children now the 2-child benefit cap is scrapped; claiming fear of going outside to get your Tractor from Motability, etc. – but those don’t affect the standard family calculation)