
Starbucks Commitment to the UK | Starbucks Coffee Company - Cbasedlifeform
http://starbucks.co.uk/blog/starbucks-commitment-to-the-uk/1240
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scott_w
The three things that stood out for me were:

1 Starbucks lumped National Insurance into their tax bill

2 They pay "branding rights" to the parent corporation

3 They make almost no profit in the UK

The first point is that NI is pretty much unavoidable anyway, so including it
doesn't really make you look great. Only really low-level tax evaders try to
get out of NI and PAYE.

The branding rights is an obvious avoidance measure. They don't _have_ to pay
this, since Starbucks UK is wholly-owned by their US headquarters (and if
they're not, they may as well be).

The final point actually follows from the second: they don't report high
profit because it's all syphoned off via branding rights. Do they seriously
expect people to believe they operate in the UK purely out of the goodness of
their hearts?

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__alexs
> The first point is that NI is pretty much unavoidable anyway, so including
> it doesn't really make you look great. Only really low-level tax evaders try
> to get out of NI and PAYE.

IANATL but do Starbucks even have any PAYE or NI tax to pay? Isn't it their
employees that pay that? Just because Starbucks happen to take the money off
of your pay cheque for you doesn't mean that it's not your tax liability
that's being paid for.

Not having your employees systematically avoiding tax (e.g. like what happens
at some levels in the civil service) is great and all but it's not like
Starbucks are out there preaching to their employees about how awesome it is
to be a tax payer.

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RobAley
In the UK, PAYE and NI are deducted from your headline wage, but then the
employer has to pay an additional NI contribution on top of that, which is
what Starbucks are presumably referring to. Employers aren't allowed to deduct
this from staff wages, so instead they simply pay staff a lower wage to start
with.

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WimLeers
People stumbling upon this: please make sure you read the comments on that
blog post.

Apparently Starbucks changed the original writing; with huge semantic
differences. It seems they divulged something they shouldn't have…

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jgrahamc
They didn't 'divulge something they shouldn't have' what they did was say that
in the £160m in taxes they are saying they paid they include PAYE. PAYE is the
portion of an employee's salary that is automatically taken by the taxman; so
Starbucks were saying they paid taxes that in fact their employees paid.

It would be interesting to know what other taxes they include in that figure
(such as VAT which a company would merely collect from customers and pass onto
the government).

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WimLeers
"so Starbucks were saying they paid taxes that in fact their employees paid."

That's what I meant by divulging something they shouldn't have. Them
considering taxes their employees paid as taxes they (Starbucks) paid is
obviously something that won't be received favorably.

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DanBC
> _Following a number of stories in the media over the last day about
> Starbucks and the amount of tax we pay each year, I believe it’s important
> that we share the facts with you on this important issue._

I know that anything they say after this is going to be sleazy lies and
distortions. It is baffling to me how they think they can churn out vapid
puffery and expect people to believe it.

The comments on the blog are delicious, and I really hope parliamentary
researchers are reading and passing information onto the select committee.

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youngtaff
It's simple really... vote with your wallet and don't buy Starbucks coffee

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Cbasedlifeform
vote with your wallet and your taste buds and your health. All three suffer
when you buy Starbucks coffee.

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Cbasedlifeform
Ha ha absolute meltdown in the comments. Methinks this won't go well for
Starbucks.

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jnye131
brilliant, one blog post not to have comments on if ever there was.

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regularfry
You'd have thought for all that effort they could have made some decent
coffee.

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SideburnsOfDoom
I prefer this article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4777423>
(Starbucks, Google and Amazon: the tax crash of Monday afternoon)

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RobAley
I'm really curious. Did anybody here read that and think that it in anyway
painted Starbucks in a better light, even if taken with a pinch of salt?

A lot of press-releases are often aimed at investors or the business markets
etc., which is why they sometimes appear strange to the general public. But
even (perhaps especially) those types of audience are even more able to see
through this kind of BS and understand how the "system" works, so I'm really
not sure why they released it at all. Any thoughts?

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takluyver
I think it's aimed at consumers, trying to patch up their public relations.
Taken at face value (and overlooking the comments), it does sound vaguely
comforting - they quote a big number for taxes paid, protest that they're not
making much money, and talk about the local things they source (so caring of
them, not to fly sandwiches in from China!). If you were unsure, but kind of
liked going to Starbucks, I imagine you could well go away thinking that maybe
the allegations were overblown.

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RobAley
Maybe. Most customers having heard the allegations though I would have thought
that it would take a lot more than this to pull the wool over their eyes.
Maybe I misjudge some of their customers though...

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antihero
<http://pastebin.com/UGdPnaDb> mirror of the comments

