

Eric Schmidt has defended paying just £6m in UK corporation tax. - groundCode
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22245770

======
petercooper
As a British taxpayer, if it's legal, I don't see the problem. If our
government (i.e. the "tax man") wants to make a deal out of it, perhaps they
can get to passing some sane tax laws or just tell the truth and explain these
situations have come about primarily due to EU tax regulations we can't get
out of (although that would play right into UKIP's hands.. aha!)

~~~
Gmo
You know that the current EU tax regulations have the UK as one of their major
backers ?

I'm really sick of always hearing everybody (and the British in particular)
blame everything on the EU.

~~~
petercooper
Which is why the British government shouldn't spend so much time whining about
how Google, Amazon, Starbucks, etc, "aren't paying enough taxes" when it's the
EU laws they backed that enable their behavior.

Personally I _do_ blame EU regulations for this situation, but the British
government is worse in being hypocritical by supporting certain laws and
regulations while being unhappy with their consequences.

------
blowski
The way some people seem to see this is "Google contributes merely £6 million
to the UK economy", which is obviously not true.

Like individuals, corporations want to pay the least possible tax. If they're
paying the legal minimum, what's the problem? If the British people want them
to pay more tax, then elect a government which would change the tax law. At
the moment, we're electing a government which hisses at corporations to make
good headlines.

~~~
DanBC
There's tax evasion, which is clearly illegal. There's tax avoidance, which is
clearly legal, and is what everyone should be doing.

Google are in a weird middle ground. They're obeying the letter of the current
law, but certainly not the spirit. 'Be careful with incentives' comes into
play here; the UK government incentivises with some tax breaks, and so
obviously some companies exploit that.

Google is stupid when they mention PAYE. That's not a tax that they pay, it is
a tax that their employees pay. Pointing out that the little people pay their
tax while the big company doesn't is really awful PR. Starbuck is stupid when
they point out all the VAT. Again, that's a tax paid by the customer, and not
Amazon.

And tax avoidance is against Google's best interest. They want smart, well
educated, workers. Pay the tax and fund the education system.

Perhaps it's a cultural thing? In the US when someone makes a lot of money
people tend to think "The American way, well done them" etc. Over here? Not so
much. It's a lot better than it was, but we've had ridiculously high tax rates
in this country. The highest rate was over 99% during WWII. But it was 90% for
most of the 50s and 60s.

(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom>)

While we're going through austerity we're going to be vociferous when we find
people not joining in, not doing their bit, not pulling their weight.

Google really needs to work out some better PR. Hopefully along the lines of
"Our tax avoidance was a bit extreme, and we're dialling that back a bit so we
pay more tax in the UK. Also, here's some stuff for schools, hope it's
useful."

------
akilism
Shouldn't everyone pay their fair share? Google is using public resources but
then shifting profits around to other countries that have a 0% effective
corporate tax rate through shady accounting practices and just falling behind
the defense that "This is how all multinational companies do their taxes."
What happened to "Don't be evil"? Just because something is legal doesn't make
it right.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/15/what-
money-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/15/what-money-could-
buy-if-google-apple-paid-full-taxes/)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/google-revenues-
she...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-10/google-revenues-sheltered-in-
no-tax-bermuda-soar-to-10-billion.html)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/google-tax-
dodge_n_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/google-tax-
dodge_n_2292077.html)

------
gonvaled
If Google is complying with the law, and if the public perception is that
Google is paying too little taxes, then the public should push for a law
change.

It is not Google's task to pay taxes. Google's task is to comply with the law.
Without putting itself at a disadvantage compared to their competitors.

Obviously, since we are talking about international issues here, there must be
some kind of international agreement for changes in the law to have any kind
of effect. But, as we have seen in recent cases regarding european fiscal
matters, (or banking regulation, or executive pay, or, or ...) Britain opposes
any kind of agreements in international taxation issues.

------
DanBC
There's some interesting dissonance on HN.

Taxes - "They're obeying the law; what's the problem?"

Patents - "They're obeying the law, but the laws are stupid."

~~~
sarvinc
I'm not sure I follow. These two things would have to be equal to each other,
or the same in some fashion. Of course I excluding the fact that both have
laws that pertain to them.

------
dazzawazza
I'm really torn by articles like this.

On the one hand Google benifits massively from our education, university,
health and infrastructure spending. All of which is paid for through taxation
and all of which isn't perfect and more money would help.

On the other hand, Google employs a lot of people and pays them well, it
sponsers a lot of community efforts and just having their knowledge pool in
the UK should spin off a number of projects employing more etc. They bring a
lot to the table.

My gut feeling is that the UK is at a net loss but things like this are very
hard to quantify and I would not like google to leave the UK even though I'd
personally never work there.

------
askimto
Companies pay their taxes until they become big enough to figure out how to
avoid them. Problem?

------
OGinparadise
_Eric Schmidt has defended paying just £6m in UK corporation tax._

If they didn't pay what was required of them legally take them to court.
Otherwise STFU, they paid their dues. Change the law if you don't like it

~~~
summerdown2
I apologise if you aren't American and I'm simply making sweeping
generalisations innacurately, but this seems to be a very common response I
see from Americans - the idea that in any situation there are only two
responses ... do it or do nothing.

In actual fact, the UK government is quite at liberty to:

a) Take them to court,

b) STFU

or anything else in between, including

c) Start a debate about it.

I've seen the same line of argument a lot in debates around personal data used
by companies, too: the idea that people should either a) accept whatever a
company wants to do, or b) not use their services. It seems weird to me to
imagine that people or governments are somehow no longer at liberty to
complain and use peer pressure to get what they want as well as to use other
routes.

~~~
KMag
In this case, perhaps there are a couple of factors. First, for many
Americans, it's very against their sense of fairness to apply unwritten rules,
especially after the fact. I'm not sure about other places, but the U.S. has a
long history of unwritten conventions being applied unevenly to the detriment
of less powerful groups within society. The U.S. also has had to deal a fair
amount with multiple cultures living near each other in a single society, and
the convention has become that unless cultural expectations become codified in
the laws by which we have all (by proxy) agreed to live by, it's very rude to
try to force your cultural norms on someone's behavior without at least
campaigning to get those norms codified in law so they are uniformly applied.
To many Americans, there's the sneaking suspicion that standards are being
unequally applied if someone is being to be asked to go beyond what the law
requires if there isn't simultaneously a strong push to codify these unwritten
expectations in law.

The second factor is perhaps the American cultural bias towards individualism,
distrust of government, "go big or go home", and a tendency to view theory as
only a means to an end (application). "Why theorize about what should be done
if your aim is not to change the laws that govern all of us?" Most Americans
don't view governments as worthy recipients (or good stewards) of voluntary
donations, and view any non-mandatory taxes paid as donations.

