Caught Nolan last night (11:34)…thankfully at tale end of a discussion on immigration.
Nolan then went on to Google and tax…..we had Edwina Currie putting up an excellent and reasoned defence and someone from Labour who didn’t have a clue about the corporate tax system in the UK but that didn’t stop her declaring emphatically that Google wasn’t paying its legal tax requirement….a classic claim from her was ‘I don’t know but I don’t think so.’
Nolan also seemed rather unversed in said tax system and declared, when Currie said Google were paying what was legally required and were based in Ireland, that this inconvenient legal fact was a ‘red herring’ and that Google weren’t paying what was morally right for them to pay.
Morally right? Wasn’t that Labour’s mantra…ala Hodge the Dodge? Always knew BBC journalists were the new priesthood…and scarily think of themselves in that way.
Any mention of The Guardians tax affairs?
And they forgot to mention the hundreds of BBC staff and presenters that set themselves up as companies to avoid paying tax as employees.
Strange that.
Or, horror of horrors, uses the dodges employed the nation’s single most important moral arbiter – the Guardian!
I did read, on Guido I think, that the Drauginad has £500 million stashed away in the Cayman Islands.
What the BBC and the Labour Party always forget to say is that the arrangements that allowed these companies to pay no tax, were arrangements put in place by Gordon Brown, of Labour party fame.
I never quite understand why companies and individuals are not ‘morally’ allowed to use the benefits of being a member of the EU – i.e. legally shifting tax liability – but have to abide by the negative aspects. What is the point of the EU if no-one benefits?
The bureaucrats, failed politicians, socialist would-be dictators, international criminals* all benefit from the EU. Failed politicians, for instance, will be paid richly for life even after losing their seats. The ordinary, decent person will of course lose as always by the EU stitch-up.
*Clearly, many of the first three categories will fall into the fourth as well.
I’m always bemused by this “moral obligation” to pay tax.
Does it come with a corresponding obligation on politicians to spend our taxes in a “moral” way? Such as not squandering 12 billion plus a year on overseas “aid”, most of which is wasted and/or goes to people who hate this country and always will, no matter how much we pay them. Or the undisclosed amount we pour into the EU black hole every day, to shore up a corrupt and unelected dictatorship which seems hell-bent on destroying our very civilisation. Or the millions paid in MPs’ “expenses” to allow people on six-figure salaries for a three day week (if that), to claim for everything you could imagine possible, and a great deal that you couldn’t. Let alone paying out millions in benefits to children and families of migrants who have never set foot in this country and probably don’t even exist.
All the while doing bog all to ensure the present and future stability and security of our country and its citizens.
But if anyone ever opened the “moral” can of worms on taxation, somebody might ask why every household in the land pays £145 a year, under threat of imprisonment, to an organisation which treats its viewers with utter contempt, hides the truth from the very people who pay their bloated salaries and lies barefaced to those people, to protect themselves and their fellow travellers, and to promote an ideology which, if successful, will destroy our nation and way of life.
“Or the millions paid in MPs’ “expenses” to allow people on six-figure salaries for a three day week (if that), to claim for everything you could imagine possible, and a great deal that you couldn’t.”
Please advise what you think an M.P.’s salary is! I suspect if you were elected to help run the country you may find life as an M.P. with all the moaners whingeing at you from both sides of a subject, trying to sort out their problems and working away from home you may be a little surprised at how cushy a life it is not.
It is precisely because they are not paid enough and the whinging public always object to them being so paid that the nod and a wink to use expenses was given.
MPs don’t run the country, they don’t even run the government. The civil service is the real power in the land, and they take their orders from Brussels. MPs just huff and puff about useless garbage such as the sugar tax.
Nicely argued article by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator, pointing out that Google gives us, free, services estimated to value £11,000,000,000. But, as he also points out, the bBBC ‘news’ has campaigned against Google because it regards it as a rival.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/google-gives-britain-services-worth-billions-for-free-the-taxes-it-pays-are-trivial-by-comparison/
The standard BBC narrative that the worth of a business can only be measured by how much cash they put into the pockets of middle class leftists.
There is no “moral obligation” to pay tax. It is a fiction invented by the Left. You are only obliged to pay the amount of tax which is required of you by law. Anything more than the law requires is a gift by you to HM Treasury.
If the Government don’t think you are paying enough tax, then they have the power to change the law so that you pay more. If they choose not exercise this power, then that is up to them, but don’t blame the Amazons and the Googles of this world for only paying what the law requires. Blame the Government for not changing the law.
Of course, in practice the Government often cannot change the law to increase tax revenues from multinational companies because EU rules forbid it.
Absolutely spot on Neil.
I don’t as far as I know pay anything to use google which is a very useful service. So I am not really worried whether they pay tax or not. In the Sunday Times today there is an article about how senior civil servants have arranged their affairs to avoid paying the punitive level of tax on their ginormous pensions, when they exceed the limit. I have always thought that morality doesn’t really apply to tax ever since I read an article about how pension contributions could be regarded as being made at a different time from when they were simply for tax purposes. You can only have grandstanding on tax if the rules are absolutely clear cut and obvious to everybody. And of course, if every penny of the money raised is used in the most efficient fashion. Pause for hollow laughter.
Ah yes, ‘moral obligations’. No such thing.
Does nobody remember that it was Labour’s own Gordon Brown who created all these “tax loopholes” for corporations to exploit EU rules, to legally reduce their tax burden, (as is their legal obligation under a law known as “fiduciary duty”)?
Why the hell can’t the BBC get its head around the fact LABOUR corporatists created these taxes in the first place?
Also, why the hell can’t the BBC find an interviewer/presenter who knows the difference between turnover and profit? The BBC journalists who keep pushing the “they made [x] billions in sales last year but only paid [y] pounds in tax” line are either total cretins or very dishonest, or more probably, both!
Any mention of Nolan’s tax affairs?