Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism' Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has dismissed criticism over how little corporation tax his company pays, saying it's just capitalism. Schmidt is "very proud" of the corporate structure Google set up to divert profits made in European countries, such as the UK, to its firms in the low-tax havens of Ireland and The …
Corporation tax is a tax on profit, not on turnover, so it only comes into play if a company is already profitable.
What is ultimately paid by consumers is the cost of letting giant corps spirit money out of the country, because it creates a market distortion that favours the large multinationals over smaller, local businesses. This is why the loopholes need to be closed.
So, how do you measure the profit here then? Obviously it is not $4.1B as some here seem to think. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay more taxes, but it is not the £400M in taxes as some seem to think it should be.
I've seen some different profit margins quoted for Google (between 13%-33.3%), but Forbes puts Googles pre-tax profit margins at 33.3%... So to be fair, Googles taxable amount would actually be closer to $1.36B. I believe that the Corporate tax rate in the UK is 26%, which I doubt most corporations actually pay, but stay with me here. Even at that amount, Google would pay at most $355M in corporate tax - somewhere around £220M.
Tax incidence ! Corporate taxes aren't paid by the corporation either, but rather they fall on some combination of Employees, Customers, shareholders, and to some extent, broader "stakeholders". Reserach tends to suggest that if capital is mobile, then employees and customers bear almost all of the burden.
Politicians and other idiots though like corporate taxes because the can make the great unwashed (many of whom seem to post on the Reg) believe that there's a free money tree that gathers tax from someone else. It's a great trick while you get so many sheep who want to believe it.
Yep, completely agree, it's the rules that must be changed. However Schmidt's ode to capitalism is leaving out one dirty little secret. The rules are made and can be changed by politicians, the politicians need money to be (re)elected, and the only people with enough money to give them a good (re)election chance are Google and all the other big capitalists, whose lobbyists are dictating to the politicians what laws to pass.
That's why the politicians are paying lip service to lambast the tax-avoiders in public, while privately making sure that the tax system stays full of friendly legal tax-avoidance loopholes
You really think Google can be threatened in this manner? They own politicians and in some cases, whole countries. They'll simply move their base of operation again.
Anyone who complains about his comments is basically complaining about capitalism. What other sort of system do we want to move to? A business is owned by its shareholders and should do everything it can to maximise the return for the shareholders in the medium to long term. The only way you can change their behaviour is to threaten their long term profits (and therefore dividends) to force a change of behaviour. But, how do you do that?
This assumes that Communism with a Capitalist/Slave Labor tilt will win out in the end. Russia fell as they tried to compete in the world market with a faulty moral/economic model. China will have a top and in the short term may be successful, but long term will fall as every Communist country has or will. The only thing that could stop this from happening is if the free countries move more toward communism... wait a second...
MP Stephen Williams, co-chairman of the Liberal Democrat Treasury Parliamentary Policy Committee, described that offer as a "joke".
should be:
MP Stephen Williams, co-chairman of the Liberal Democrat Treasury Parliamentary Policy Committee, described as a "joke".
having met the man on many occaisions
As Ken Hagan told us just now, IT IS THE POLITICIANS' FAULT. You can't repeat that too often, or too loudly. Here is what the egregious Stephen Williams has to say, for instance (in TFA):
"Tax is something that is a legal obligation that you should pay. It’s not a charitable donation in order to gain brand value."
But the whole uproar arose BECAUSE Google was paying the tax it was legally obliged to pay! The proposed charitable donation was simply some intelligent (but puzzled) people's tentative reply to a bunch of outraged morons who claimed that paying the tax legally due was somehow not enough.
Today we apparently have a political leadership that passes (or maintains) laws that allow corporations to pay little or no tax. That is ENTIRELY the politicians' fault. And if they then have the sheer crust to complain about it, well... maybe we should give them a hint that we are looking for more intelligent (and/or honest) representatives.
Better idea. Ask the MPs what they think Google should have paid. Subtract what Google did pay. Divide that by the number of MPs. Recover said sum for the assets of every MP.
Or, if they won't agree to that, ask them who passed the laws. Once you have a list of names, remove them from the house for gross incompetence and hold some elections.
You can bet than when it comes to the next round of tax law, all their minds will be more focused.
Either way, it's not Google, Starbucks' or anyone else's "fault". They are playing the game (perhaps a sharp and nasty game) but a game nonetheless and within the rules; we must blame cretins who gave us these rules.
Oh yes its brilliant. That would be why, as just one example, searching for a manual for a Xerox Phaser 7500 doesn't bring up a single page that is even on the xerox website. Google and Bing both have it as the first result. Like I said that is just 1 example of things I have tried to use duckduckgo for and it has failed badly. I have tried it quite a few times as I would like to move away from Google but as things stand now, it's crap but ymmv
ok, so the top result i got on DDG for "Xerox Phaser 7500 Manual" was this one...
http://www.office.xerox.com/userdoc/P7500/pdfs/user_guide_en.pdf
seems to be the right one.
by the way, if you know that it is on the Xerox site (implicit in your post), then why not just go there directly? When people with an IT interest only seem to know how to use the net by using a search engine, it is a sad day indeed...
I can't speak for the OP, but "userdoc/P7500/pdfs/user_guide_en.pdf" isn't exactly obvious, so a search of some kind would seem to be in order. On the other hand, any search engine that can't be told to restrict its attention to a single site would be beneath contempt so I imagine *that* is what those with an IT interest ought to do.
Then it isn't consistent.
My results:
Phaser 7500 manual - safemanuals.com/user-guide-instructions-owner-manual/XE...
Xerox Phaser 7500 manual - safemanuals.com/user-guide-instructions-owner-manual/XE...
"Xerox Phaser 7500 manual" - sumanual.com/instrucciones-guia-manual/XEROX/PHASER-...
3 different searches, not one returning anything from xerox themselves. That is awful.
Now being tech literate I can refine searches to make the results better, even down to specifying the website I want it to search, but you try getting the average user to do that.
With Google, no extra commands:
Phaser 7500 manual - www.support.xerox.com/support/phaser-7500/file.
That is what the end user wants - a search engine clever enough to return the correct result just by typing a few words.
for clarity:
1) i mean go to the xerox site, click on support and find it that way, not type in the address verbatim
2) i typed in the phrase "Xerox Phaser 7500 manual" but without the quotes (i know that the quotes change the emphasis slightly)
3) i'm searchng from the UK, i guess that it might be different from elsewhere...
i use DDG as my first port of call. i i don't find something on there i will then try google or Bing, but to be honest there does not seem to be any real difference between the two.
Complaint: "Duck Duck Go is shit. I used it to search for something, and it didn't find it."
Response: "No, Duck Duck Go is fine. You should have gone to the relevant website and found it for yourself. Why would you need a search engine?"
Bravo!
I'm still using Google, simply because Google is the best there is at what it does (even if what it does ain't very nice).
i think you missed the point i was making.
his complaint was that none of the DDG results were on xerox.com where he expected them to be and he ignored / discounted the results becasue of this.
my question is, if you know where they are, why do you need a search engine?
Did i miss something?
Yes you did. For instance, I tell you satnav such and such is crap.
You ask, how do I know.
Well, because I'm familiar around here and there are better routes, see. And I show you these routes.
And then you answer: well, if you know the way here, why do you use a satnav?
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