Boycott Amazon

[ahinton]

it seems that Starbucks can afford £10M pa as a PR issue - suggesting that this is a small fraction of their profits - indicating that they are making much from their totally artifical tax arrangements and more importantly that the initial boycott has worked - maybe try another company and see what the shakeout is

It's a minuscule fraction of their annual profits even for a single year and takes no account of the number of years that they've had their arrangements in place or how much tax has been avoided during the whole of that time. A mere PR exercise it is indeed and no doubt involving backhanders along not dissimilar lines to those from which Vodafone benefitted some while ago. But what boycott is this? I'm not aware that there's even been one!

[ahinton]

While we're about it, let's recognise and appreciate that the gesture that Starbucks has now announced its preparedness to make is a PR exercise more than a damage limitation one and does not involve payment of tax; in fact, it requires quite a stretch of the imagination to regard the charitable donation that it's now offered even as payment in lieu of tax.

Why? Well, quite simply, because no tax is due until and unless it has been assessed and then demanded by HMRC. Evan Davies, in rather amusingly describing the "gesture" (you can almost see the two fingers from here) as a "marketing exercise" on this morning's R4 Today programme went on to joke about whether, as such, it would be tax deductible.

John Redwood MP then spoke about corporate tax competition and how this country needs to get in front by lowering its rates (which it's doing) in the hope of attracting tax that's currently charged in other countries, so that Britain can rise further up the ladder in the international tax transfer market.

One might question whether those who regard the kind of tax avoidance currently in focus as immoral might also consider the government immoral to try to lever its way up to pulling more tax away from other countries and wrenching it into Britain's coffers - and I suggest that anyone who does think that this is both immoral and trying to have it both ways (i.e. HMRC charging corporation tax but at the same time trying to steal other countries' corporation tax and put it in its own coffers) is probably only a hair's breadth from having to consider whether, in such a cynically and aggressively competitive climate, the very notion of corporation tax itself is of somewhat dubious morality, not to say credibility. I don't say that it is necessarily so, but the question deserves and needs to be asked.

While thinking about the answer, here's a few tidbits of news that should help to cheer up a cold day by demonstrating that the Starbucks et al tax planning exercises are pretty small fry in terms of what goes on in the international financial markets; the publishers, the usually (though not always) reliable Citywire, fall somewhat surprisingly into the trap of pretending that the Starbucks donation is "tax", but no one's perfect in the world of journalism, as Lord Leveson and others already know.

http://www.citywire.co.uk/new-model-adviser/friday-papers-starbucks-pledges-20m-tax-donation/a644029?re=21725&ea=317026&utm_source=BulkEmail_NMA_Daily_EAM&utm_medium=BulkEmail_NMA_Daily_EAM&utm_campaign=BulkEmail_NMA_Daily_EAM