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Post by Big Lin on May 16, 2013 22:21:59 GMT
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hmrc-are-being-bamboozled-by-google-mps-confront-search-giant-over-devious-attempt-to-avoid-paying-uk-tax-8618695.htmlHMRC are being 'bamboozled' by Google: MPs confront search giant over 'devious' attempt to avoid paying UK tax OLIVER WRIGHT WHITEHALL EDITOR THURSDAY 16 MAY 2013 Google was branded “devious, calculating and unethical” by MPs who accused the internet giant of deliberately subverting its motto, “don't be evil”, in order to pay less tax. Infuriated members of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) lashed out at the company as one of its most senior executives insisted it was not "selling" advertising in the UK – but in low-tax Ireland instead. The arrangement allowed Google to pay just £6m in UK corporation tax in 2011 despite generating more than £3bn in advertising revenues in this country. "You are a company that says you do no evil," said Margaret Hodge, the committee's chairman. "I think that you do do evil. You use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax." Last night, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, increased the pressure on the company, accusing it of operating a culture of "corporate irresponsibility" and going to "extraordinary lengths" to avoid paying tax. Labour sources said Mr Miliband would be raising the issue directly with company executives when he meets them at a conference next week. (Click on link for full article)
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Post by Big Lin on May 16, 2013 23:01:15 GMT
The trouble is that for too long successive governments of both Labour and Conservatives have cosied up to these corporate criminals and allowed them to get away with non-payment of tax.
At least Starbucks has been embarrassed into agreeing to pay some of the tax it owes; so far Google is simply saying 'we didn't break the rules, just the spirit of the law.'
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 14:53:05 GMT
I've heard theat it's the government's fault because they set the rules up in a way that let Google and Starbucks and that mob get away with it.
If you don't have the sense to set up the system properly when you;re writing the rules yourself you can't complain if people find ways to get round them because of your stupididyt!
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Post by Hunny on May 17, 2013 15:09:35 GMT
I dont know about in England, but in the U.S. businesses are willing to harm the country, put millions of people into misery, anything to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The lies they tell, the propaganda they pump out for people to parrot, suggests that it would be (you name it: ant-American, communist, terrorist, Socialist, whatever at the time is considered the worst thing to be, against the country) to suggest businesses pay ANY taxes. They tell us the reason they shouldn't pay is because if they do they won't be able to afford to make more jobs for us. ->Well, we gave them the cuts, and they not only didnt make any new jobs, they in fact gutted the whole economy by SELLING all our jobs for a quick obscene profit, and the hell with what it causes!
So far they've gotten away with having the average dumb dumbs parrot that "it's (evil) to suggest they pay", but the more damage they cause, the closer they get to where the tide of support will turn against them. And that change will come with new regulations, more control being exerted upon them, AND IT WILL BE ABOUT TIME.
Frankly corporations should be hated for what they actually are. And I hope that tide changes soon, but I also dread, like so many Americans, that the time for turning it around is past and the damage is all already done. Corporations will retain control and keep cameras on us and make us strip to go in a building and every ugly kind of 1984 thing. We, in fact, think of the corporations and the government as one and the same. And corporations only have one goal, and it isn't about our interest or protecting us from them!
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Post by Hunny on May 17, 2013 15:11:50 GMT
I've heard theat it's the government's fault because they set the rules up in a way that let Google and Starbucks and that mob get away with it. If you don't have the sense to set up the system properly when you;re writing the rules yourself you can't complain if people find ways to get round them because of your stupididyt! Over here the government IS the corporations, so..they make the rules to fit what they most want to do: pillage the country.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 21:46:24 GMT
I'm not sure that even in America that's quite true. But then I'm a different sotr t of leftw-inger from you - I'm not a socialist which I think you probably are.
But something needs to be done to sort out the whole shambles of corrupti politiaisn taking bribes from big business.
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Post by Hunny on May 18, 2013 15:56:36 GMT
I've never cared for joining a "side"..they seem to be imaginary constructs designed to enable conflict...so I wouldn't really consider myself a socialist or any affiliation that makes me either us or them. I just believe in the world we had under Kennedy and Johnson. They may have screwed up making war and wasting the resources, but they had the right idea: people pay taxes to make a decent country to live in for themselves, not so the rich people can abscond with it. To me, that's just reality and anything that opposes it with other "ideas" is the imaginary thing, the 'opposing'. In America opposing is done currently by some really ugly war-mongering money grubbers who have a party, which amounts to a propaganda machine and a fund to use for bribery and controlling even the news so they can carry out their taking-control-of-the-whole-world nonsense, and turning America into just another pool of "third world" type (low payed, payed below what it costs to live indoors) workers for them. Slaves really. ("Wage slaves".) And all that isn't about a different perspective one can have on how to run a place, a different "opinion"; it's more like what's portrayed in Animal Farm. It's something rotten going on.
And that people vote for that party is proof that propaganda is easy, and idiocy is epidemic.
Now that's not an opinion, that's how it is here. And if seeing things that way makes me a socialist, well ok then. But i just think all there is is 1 - reality (one way things are), and 2 - those who distort truth to try and take control for themselves, for their own selfish agenda, which doesnt serve the public at all, but preys on it.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2013 9:44:12 GMT
and the rich get richer ...
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