U.K. Government Targets Tech Giants Like Apple and Amazon Over Tax Payments

[gnasher729]

Shame on the UK for this anti-trade activity. It is the UK which engaged in the worst mercantilism and regressive taxation of people through the entire colonial era. Now it wishes to illegally tax an American company? This is the same UK that allows its arms merchants to engage in corruption to bribe middle east tyrants to buy their arms.

The UK is free to set its own tax laws (well, they will be in 16 months, but they are mostly free now). Any taxation according to tax laws is entirely legal. The reason that Apple is paying very little tax in the UK right now is because the UK has rubbish laws, and it's entirely right to change this.

I get it that it sucks that Apple shuffles money around to tax havens but it's not tax evasion if what Apple is doing is legal. If Apple was engaging in tax evasion, we would be talking about criminal charges. There isn't a shred of proof that what Apple is doing is illegal.

Apple does this entirely in the open. Apple is clearly allowed to move money around, and then they tell HMRC "we moved money from A to B and from B to C etc. and therefore we pay this small amount of UK tax". And HMRC says "yes" or "no". If they say "yes" then it is entirely legal tax avoidance. If they say "no" then Apple has to pay, and there is neither tax evasion nor avoidance.
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Apple and Starbucks have shown us all that profits can be shuffled to any country that want. Starbucks shifts all UK profits to Amsterdam by using a pseudo licensing fee. The solution for this corruption is for each company that sells products in a country to be taxed on global profits prorated based on the portion of products sold in the country. If 10% of all Apple goods and services (pre-VAT) are sold in the UK then the UK government should tax 10% of Apple global profits.

That's not unreasonable. It would be tricky if a company sets up subsidies, so there are different companies.

 

[coffeemadmanUK]

Typical government. Instead of changing the laws, they ignore them.

Erm... that's what they have done.

Normally not taxed under current law.
Will be taxed under new law.

 

[grad]

Since when the double Irish loophole became legal ? EU felt it makes sense to rule against the ridiculous sweetheart deal Ireland and Apple (among others) had for decades and actually they did it too late. The question is not whether it was done post mortem, let the courts decide. Having tons of lawyers and billions to spend under the table does not make you legal. And, if you are Ireland, you can't have all the benefits of the EU free market and have separate deals that are practically for laundry. Besides, avoiding international tax by exploiting desperate countries and corrupt politicians is not ethical either. If Apple wanted to save money they should have started first with avoiding US tax instead, and don't tell me there are no loopholes there.