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Welcome to Planet Tesco [formerly Earth]
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8009513.stmThe supermarket chain Tesco has reported underlying annual pre-tax profits of £3.13bn, an improvement of 10% on the previous year.
Its sales topped £1bn a week for the first time with group sales coming in at £59.4bn.
The profits are the highest on record for a UK retailer.
And incredibly the thieving, dishonest, litigating greedy bastards still have the cheek to defraud us all of untold millions of Pounds every year through their morally repugnant tax avoidance schemes.
All while continuing to treat farmers and producers like garbage and pay them risible amounts for their produce, and desolating high street after high street with their ever growing stores both in and out of town.
Oh well. At least we can all get cheap baked beans...
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
ALL ? ? ?
If you do not have your snout in the bottomless trough known as taxpayer's money (or do not intend to) then how are you being defrauded ?
The farmers and producers do not have to do business with Tesco. It is a choice they have made. Presumably because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
That is as simplistic as is wrong. And I'm pretty sure you are fare more intelligent than that.
The logical conclusion to that hypothesis would mean that anyone who is not putting 100% of EVERYTHING they earn into the trough is defrauding everyone else.
I know farmers and producers who do not deal with Tesco et al on principle. They all seem very happy with that decision.
However business and individuals who live and/or conduct their business in the UK can and must be expected to pay their due amount of tax on that business. When businesses like Tesco exploit loopholes and avoid paying tax for business generated in the UK, they are defrauding everybody and behaving like thieving cunts- far, far worse than benefit cheats IMO.
I'm sure that's the case but there are almost limitless sets of circumstances. Some farmers might have no option if they are to survive but to sell to big supermakets (to be fair to Tesco it is by no means they only store to pay pittances to farmers). But Tesco is still using its immense purchasing power to blackmail farmers into practically givinig away their produce.
The one personal example I know def live waaaaaaay above their means if that is the case.
Those core values and beliefs are better known as the secular religion of democracy. A consequence of which is taxation according to wealth and/or earnings.
Like or not rules are established that say what that level and amount of taxation is, and where it is applied. Most of the applicable rules can be found in the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003. I suspect that the Tesco Corporation have abided by the rules contained therein. To the best of my knowledge the fraud you allege is not contained in the 725 sections (or additional Schedules).
If you do not agree with those "core values" I could understand your upset. However you appear to be somewhat priest-like in your belief and love of taxation, and therefore your upset is somewhat puzzling.
It really is very simple. If the business is conducted in the UK by British companies, tax should be paid. Creating smokescreen companies domiciled in sleaze-ridden tax havens thousands of miles away is a cynical, despicable attempt to defraud the British taxpayer.
Misguided ?
It seems to me that the best way to avoid paying Income Tax is to avoid having income. Simple but true.
As of April 6th 2009 those rules that you worship in principle but seem to despise in practice allow an individual to earn £6475 before they pay any tax.
Almost everyone exploits that loophole. That is a whole lot of deprivation for the country.
Aladdin misses the point with his rants about tax avoidance. Companies are only avoiding taxes which the government has allowed them to - why is he not having a go at New Labour for this? Doubtless if Call Me Dave's Tories were in charge, he would be screaming from the rooftops about it. As for those allegations in Teh Grauniad - part of Guardian Media Group, who paid no corporation tax despite making £300million in profits during 2008 - of Tesco avoiding tax, Guido Fawkes exposes their hypocrisy beautifully here.
It's a never ending game of cat and mouse, and certainly not the fault of this government (certainly not any more than previous governments, Labour and Tory alike).
Personally I'd hit any company found engaging in such schemes with a massive bill, and carry on doing it until they start paying the tax they should.
And,presumably, in the interest of fairness and equality, a similar massive bill for every individual who uses his/her personal tax allowance which is the most widespread legal loophole of the lot ?
Nice Straw Man though.
Define loophole.
The tax allowance you speak of is an integral part of the taxation system, and clearly allowed by it.
It is not a loophole. At all. Couldn't be further from it.
Creating webs of fake companies in foreign lands under many different names to channel profits from business conducted in the UK by UK companies is, however, a loophole.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget2009/bn01.pdf
Seems a decent definition; and your example of a lower tax bracket as equivalent to corporate tax avoidance is hardly a comparable situation, for the primary reason that people paying below no tax below a particular band do so because that is precisely the intention of the regulation.
What most people don't tend to do is move large amounts of their capital around the world to stay below it.
To anyone from Zanu Labia who happens to be reading this - you're the ones who have passed laws allowing yourselves to spy on what we do on the interwebz - read your history books. During the 1970s, when you lot were last in charge, people who earnt more than £50k a year paid tax at 98%. Result? The richest in our society took all their money ashore and accountants had one of the biggest booms in the history of their industry. Oh yeah, and the Government had to go to something called the IMF cos they'd bankrupted the country - something which they're about to do again, looking at today's Budget.
That explains the legal and financial realties of this part of the Darling speech today:
" In November, I also announced that I was reducing personal allowances for the very highest earners with incomes over £100,000.
These allowances are worth twice as much as those of basic-rate taxpayers.
I have now decided to FULLY WITHDRAW the benefit of that allowance for those with incomes over £100,000 from next April.
Mr Deputy Speaker, these measures are necessary to build our recovery and secure our country's economic future." (emphasis mine)
Perhaps Darling thinks those allowances are loopholes ?
I agree. That does seem to be the intent as it is written.
But, using Aladdin's logic and standards, by taking advantage of that allowance they are causing deprivation to the trough.
A good legal tax advisor would no doubt explain to them that under current tax laws there is no need to do that.
People are supposed, allowed to and encouraged to take advantage of the tax allowances you're been mentioning.
People however are most definietely not encouraged to find dastarly ways to avoid paying the tax they should by creating fake companies and complex schemes.
I know for a fact you understand this as well as the rest of us do, so please do not pretend otherwise. You know full well what a loophole is and what isn't. Please quit pretending otherwise.
Au contraire.
There is no pretence on my part. Allowance is indeed the key word. This is a fundamental of English Law. The common law principle that everyone is free to do anything unless specifically prohibited by law.
Therefore if there is no specific "thou shall not" in the tax laws, everything else is an allowance.
It is crystal clear that as far as the law, the tax rules and indeed the country intends, companies that are British and conduct business in the UK should pay the due tax on profits. When a company like Tesco creates complex webs of phantom companies through third parties and base them in countries far away, it is doing so with the specific purpose of avoiding paying the tax it should. Because sure as fuck the profits were still generated in British soil by a British company and to British people.
The very fact that the likes of Barclays and Tesco are always suing or threatening to sue anyone who exposes their tax avoidance schemes tells it all: even they are fully aware that what they're doing is wrong as fuck. Though of course, their limitless greed overpower any feeling of common decency they might have ever harboured.
Emotional language with no basis in fact.
While I contend that there is a strong case to be made that ALL corporations are criminal enterprises, the corporation is a legal invention of the state designed with a specific purpose in mind.
They are not "cheats" according to the rules. I suspect that most corporations observe the rules of the game far more stringently than most individuals. After all that is part of their corporate charter.
I just wonder then why have companies like KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers made a packet by coming up with financial 'products' that allow companies to bundle up, shift, hide and manipulate capital in order to avoid paying large amounts of tax on it.
Just business, nothing personal. Playing the game by the rules.
Corporations maximising their profits in their (corporate) clients' best interests.
Although I was not making reference to corporations per se. I think it is their best interest to maximise income. The opposite is true for an individual.