What's your point ? Are you saying they are morally right to avoid taxes or shifting the blame to the shareholders ? (I seem to recall Google avoided paying taxes in the UK on benefits made in the UK by transferring the money elsewhere).
Google doesn't need to "transfer the money" elsewhere. They conduct sales from an EU company within an EU country to another EU country.
That is precisely the point of EU. I am therefore astonished that it mostly seems to be the same persons and political parties that both
a) want Britain to stay in EU
b) castigate Google for acting precisely in the way the EU legislation has been intended to work.
Personally, I engage in tax avoidance schemes e.g. by purchasing wine and spirits and even using restaurant services in a lower-tax regime, which is across a patch of sea two hours away (within EU). I have also avoided taxes by ceasing to use haircut/barber services in my country where there's VAT and service prices generally are very high.
> That is precisely the point of EU. I am therefore astonished that it mostly seems to be the same persons and political parties that both
> a) want Britain to stay in EU
> b) castigate Google for acting precisely in the way the EU legislation has been intended to work.
Oh, come on... you know that there are many forces working in opposite directions in the EU parliament and commission. Lobbies are pushing for legislation that are directly against the EU's interest. That and the whole political facade and short term benefits.
> Personally, I engage in tax avoidance schemes e.g. by purchasing wine and spirits and even using restaurant services in a lower-tax regime, which is across a patch of sea two hours away (within EU). I have also avoided taxes by ceasing to use haircut/barber services in my country where there's VAT and service prices generally are very high.
I'd rather my country's fiscal brigade or whatever goes after bigger fishes than you :).
> Oh, come on... you know that there are many forces working in opposite directions in the EU parliament and commission.
Of course there are. What I'm saying is that it particularly seems to be parties of the political left, for instance Labour in the UK, who are both pro-EU and against the very essence of EU with their nationalist and protectionist economic rhetoric. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are more skeptical of EU in general but more for free trade.
It's similar in other countries.
> Tax avoidance != tax fraud (or fiscal fraud)
Quite. I don't think anyone has caught Google or other big companies of large-scale tax fraud. There are of course always some small differences of opinion on how some status should be interpreted, but by and large the way the corporations work has been found to be in compliance with law. Large figures of "tax gap" are published but based on fantasy.
Of course people are morally right to avoid taxes! Only an idiot would act otherwise. You simply organize your affairs so that you comply with the fiscal rules and
"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"
-- Lord Clyde in the case of Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue [1929]
As to the objection to low tax locations:
'It’s pure tax protectionism: governments don’t produce widgets, so they are all in favour of free trade in widgets; but they do produce taxes, so they want to keep out the competition. Low-tax jurisdictions act as a safety valve that makes it harder for politicians to oppress their citizens with crippling taxes'.
> Of course people are morally right to avoid taxes!
That's a major postulate. Especially regarding the morality of it and the practicality. Frankly that's another debate and I think we can already agree to disagree.
I'll point out that Google is not people though and the mass of money being evaded that way can't be justified in the eyes of the people down the social ladder who are told to buckle up their seat belt once again because the 'conomy is crashing again and they are going to need to make sacrifices to save banks (again).
What moral argument can you make that money earned overseas by a multinational corporation intrinsically belongs in the U.S.? You can make that argument on the basis of nationalism—not morality.
The original post used Apple and Google as examples. I'm not aware of any scenario in which those companies move U.S. revenues offshore to shield them from taxes. If I'm not mistaken, Tim Cook is on record that Apple only shields foreign-earned income from the IRS.
