Bah!
No, this sort of massive tax avoidance on steroids is ok. That nice Mr Trump says so.
One cannot deny facts like that.
Anthony Hodges, a Basingstoke-based IT consultant, has been barred from acting as a company director for eight years due to mischief undertaken as his company went into liquidation. Investigating the demise of management consultancy Hodges & Coley, of which Hodges was the sole director, the Insolvency Service said it had …
"Neglect of tax affairs is not a victimless action as it deprives the taxpayer of the funds needed to operate public services,"
Unless you are making Billions of $$, and can afford good tax dodging lawyers, to pay virtually fuck all tax
Citation - see:
Starbucks
Google.....
And yet Philip Green is still allowed to be chairman of the Arcadia Group despite paying his family and himself massive dividends whilst driving BHS into bankruptcy. I guess he must have invited the Right People to his lavish parties.
"And yet Philip Green is still allowed to be chairman of the Arcadia Group despite paying his family and himself massive dividends whilst driving BHS into bankruptcy. I guess he must have invited the Right People to his lavish parties."
Did he do it while insolvent? No. So he cannot be done for trading while insolvent. Note that he sold BHS as a going concern, and also wrote off more in loans and the price he paid for the company than he made out of it in dividends. The pension problems are primarily the fault of low interest rates, and are replicated all over the world: the BHS deficit is significantly wider now than it was when the company went into liquidation, for example. But let's not let a few facts get in the way of a rant about billionaires.
That wasn't low hanging fruit, he was simply taking the piss. Paid 3k in tax and 420k to himself? FFS, he's lucky not to be in prison. As a former contractor, you push the tax code but only so far. The harder you push it the higher your head is above the parapet. He had the flagpole up his arse he went that hard at it.
The unspoken truth with big business not paying tax is that it's reported pretty vaguely by the media. Often they say things like "XXXX paid only £3000 this year in Corporation tax". - which begs the question "Yes - but what other taxes did they pay?". It may be that Corporation Tax isn't the appropriate tax for them to pay, because they're paying the money elsewhere for a variety of reasons.
It could also be that they're not making massive profits. For example, if a business is expanding and ploughing most of it's profit back into to expansion it may actually make very small profits year-on-year, despite the apparent value of the enterprise continuing to increase. Similarly if it's investing money in other businesses, or paying off loans or a variety of other things it may not appear to make much actual cash or may not pay much in particular taxes, choosing or needing to pay it elsewhere instead.
Don't misunderstand me - it's highly likely that a lot of businesses are avoiding paying tax and, possibly, the rules need to be tightened. But the rules are what they are and if people are taking advantage of them to avoid handing over money, that's on the government not the people doing it. UNLESS they're breaking the rules.
Perhaps hard to believe, but I think the media are sensationalising this somewhat.
Thinking about it I'm pretty sure the £5Bn company (value shortly after IPO when their shares hit £50 a share, not at the £1.61 a share my options were priced at or the 50p a share when my options became sellable) I used to work for paid nothing in corporation tax. Something to do with the fact that during it's entire lifespan (before dumping the UK for the US) the company rather than making a profit was burning through about £25Mn a quarter
"Corporation Tax is a tax that limited companies, and some other organisations like clubs and societies, must pay to HMRC on their profits"
Why does a company have a profit? Surely any money in its bank account is either going to be used for company expenses, and any extra money will be being divvied up among the owners of the company - who will then pay income tax on it.
Dividends (the divvy up) is a disbursement of post-tax profits. If your company made money above costs then the man wants to clip the ticket. After that, depending on what you do with the retained profit, he may get to clip it again (VAT on purchase that cannot be passed on), and again (dividends -> income tax), and again (VAT on purchases from distributed dividends) etc.