Tag Archives: Corporation Tax

Corporation Tax is paid by UK Contractors using Limited Companies on the profits they make on their businesses

General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) will not catch multinationals

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General Anti Avoidance Rules offshore

General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR)

There is a common misperception that the new General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) will force companies like Google, Facebook and Starbucks to pay more UK tax. It will do no such thing and it is not even aimed at them.

Playing Field

The problem that the UK Government has in this area is that it doesn’t control the playing field. Other countries can use whatever rate of Corporation tax that they like and the UK cannot do anything about it. They can’t tell Ireland, Luxembourg and Switzerland what Corporation Tax to set.

Maybe the EU could but remember that the EU has a common VAT rate – but Britain has a different one. This would certainly be brought up if Britain tried to introduce a standard rate of corporation tax across the EU.

Switzerland is not even in the EU anyway and neither are the Bahamas, Bermuda etc.

Loading Up Costs

In terms of General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR), it’s also up to companies in which countries they load up costs and in which countries they have low costs and high profits.

General Anti Avoidance Rules

General Anti Avoidance Rules affecting UK contractors

Those countries with low corporation tax rates lose out as the companies incur fewer costs there like opening factories or hiring people.

Those with higher rates of tax will ge the benefit of the companies loading up costs by running their operations there. Those countries will earn income tax and have fewer people claiming unemployment benefit.

Dice Loaded

It’s swings and roundabouts. Cameron is trying to load the dice so that the UK can get both jobs and the corporation tax. However, he can’t bring in many measures to do so. He would have to get international cooperation and that will prove very difficult to do with low tax countries like Ireland saying that their corporation tax rate of 12.5% was not negotiable even when they were being forced into a bailout.

Any multinational agreement on all of this is a long way off, if it happens at all. Why should countries not compete on tax rates as well as on everything else. Surely that’s the free market. Surely a Conservative would understand that. Why do they want or need General Anti Avoidance rules (GAAR)?

Offshore Schemes have Government foaming at mouth

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Offshore Schemes for contractors

Offshore Schemes

The Government has fulminated about offshore schemes where big companies are able to avoid paying tax in the UK. David Cameron has criticised ‘clever accountants’ who set up these offshore schemes for their clients to avoid paying UK tax.

Margaret Hodge of the Public Accounts Committee has attacked the big Accountancy companies for setting up these schemes at a Public Enquiry.

However, one wonders who should be in front of this Public Enquiry, the big Accountancy companies or the Government. After all, it is the Government who are in charge of the law. The big Accountancy companies just follow the laws that the Government set up.

Offshore Schemes for UK contractors to save tax

Offshore Schemes for UK contractors to save tax

Thatcher Government

Perhaps the Committee should investigate members of the Thatcher Government. The Committee could ask them why one of the first pieces of legislation they put through in 1979 after being elected was to allow people to send money offshore without it being taxed. Why was that so urgent?

There’s a lot of talk also about trying to shame companies like Starbucks into paying more tax than they legally have to.

Perhaps they should put David Cameron in front of the Committee to ask him if he would hand over to HMRC a big chunk of his own inheritance which came from the offshore schemes set up by his father Ian, who was one of the early practitioners of such schemes.

George Osborne

Perhaps they can bring Chancellor George Osborne before the Committee. They could ask him if he would promise to that he and his family will pay not just the tax that they have to but the amount of tax that they would have had to do if their £4.5m family trust has been set up in the UK rather than set up offshore.

Contractor Tax Avoidance sches on Isle of Man

Contractor Tax Avoidance schemes

So, the problem for the Government is that these offshore schemes are mainly used by their supporters and backers. There’s not a huge amount of Labour backers with offshore trusts.

These offshore schemes are used by people like David Cameron’s father-in-law Lord Astor and the Conservative Party’s main sponsor and fundraiser Lord Ashcroft. However, it was Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government who brought in the laws allowing people to send money offshore untaxed.

Multinational Companies

What they don’t appear to like is multinational companies getting a slice of what was set up just for the upper and business classes in Britain to avoid paying UK Tax. The upper and business classes in Britain have been taking advantage of this for more than 40 years. However, they are now outraged that companies like Starbucks, IBM, Google and Microsoft are using them.

What really annoys them is that freelancers, many of them in IT, are using offshore schemes to avoid UK tax. IT Contractors mainly come from the middle and working classes. They didn’t set these laws up for them.  So, will Cameron and Osborne change the laws which have helped their supporters and sponsors for many, many years – or is this just a knee jerk reaction to a media frenzy.

We shall see. For the moment these offshore schemes remain perfectly legal.

Facebook avoiding UK Tax

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Facebook

Facebook

Facebook are the latest company caught avoiding UK Tax. They made £840m in profits last year. However, they paid just £2.9m in tax – all of it in Ireland. Although they only hire 287 staff in Ireland all, of the advertising outside the USA they book to Facebook Ireland.

They book the profit to Ireland. However, they then move that money out of Ireland to the Cayman Islands and its Californian parent. The technique is called Double Irish. They charge the Irish company royalties for using the Facebook brand in much the same as Starbucks do. They moved £750m that way.

Advertising Revenues

Facebook then reported a loss of £15m loss in Ireland despite all the advertising revenues outside the US ending up there. This is even though 44% of Facebook’s revenues come into Ireland.

At least they gave Ireland £2.9m. They gave the UK just £238,000 in Corporation tax. Facebook say that they comply with all UK laws – and of course they do. They just know how to work the system.

It said that it picked Ireland as its European base because it was the “best location to hire staff with the right skills to run a multilingual hi-tech operation serving the whole of Europe”.

The low Corporation Tax of 12.5% and the ability to do be able to do a Double Irish, it seems, played no part in the decision to go there. Of course, Ireland didn’t get any great benefits from Facebook in terms of Company Tax. Although Facebook’s Irish staff pay income tax there.

UK Tax Avoidance

The Chancellor George Osborne has promised to do something about it. However, it will be difficult and he risks major companies pulling out of the UK. He is going to target high income earners in the UK who hide money overseas.

However, most of the schemes are completely legal. Neither the individuals or companies, like Facebook, are breaking any laws. It is legal tax avoidance rather than illegal tax evasion.

The big problem is with companies who charge other companies within the group royalty payments for using the brand name. They are perfectly entitled to do so. They are perfectly entitled to charge them anything they want for the use of it too.

Perhaps that is one area where the UK can legislate, i.e. to limit the amount that they can charge for using the brand name. Of course, those companies will then look for other costs that they can load up in the locations where they want to load up costs.