Tax avoidance is harming us all.

[mossdog]

Do you think Edd Balls's brother pays his due share of tax or his company advises its clients to do so?

Exactly!...............fiddlin" is just, if not more rife and illegal at the bottom of the trough than the top, we all know that,....it's just that there are more £000 on the end at the top of the trough.

[Staunton]

I am afraid that the labour party is similarly in thrall to free market ideology. They are not opposing the cuts today, they allowed tax avoidance throughout their administration, they championed PFI schemes that played a major part in eroding public sector accountability and channelled tax into private pockets.

[truman]

I'm saying that employers have choices (and in my opinion a responsibility.)

 

When profits are pouring in, (which they are)

 

That must explain Woolworths,Comet,Jessops,Habitat,Borders,Threshers,Allders,MFI,HMV,Virgin Megastore,Ratners,Peacocks.JJB,etcetc.

[Staunton]

Private companies fail, Woolworths, Jessops, and many other high street names have disappeared, and many more are struggling - we have been in the grip of harsh economic times here in the West since the financial scandal of 2008. Capitalism is fundamentally competitive, and there will always be business failures, especially when the finance sector operates in the ruthless manner that we have been witnessing over the last 5 years.

 

However, the most lucrative seams being exploited by present circumstances are those public institutions such as the NHS, and our local authority services, together with the aid budget controlled by central government. It is these that offer the corporate sector a profits bonanza at the expense of the taxpayer.

 

This must be challenged. We must all take notice, take care to understand just what is happening to our public institutions, and seek to ensure that the tax we pay provides services for our communities and support for those in need rather than lining the pockets of the multinationals.

[Anna Glypta]

Ford Motor Company recently avoided paying £billions in UK tax by moving its entire Transit Van production facility to Rumania. Ford now pays far less corporate tax and has also reduced its wage bill as the wages in Rumania are way below the UKs minimum wage. Customers benefit because Ford can now sell its vans cheaper. Ford benefits because it is more competitive in a global market.

Do people think Ford is acting illegally or immorally by such actions?

[Xt500]

Ford Motor Company recently avoided paying £billions in UK tax by moving its entire Transit Van production facility to Rumania. Ford now pays far less corporate tax and has also reduced its wage bill as the wages in Rumania are way below the UKs minimum wage. Customers benefit because Ford can now sell its vans cheaper. Ford benefits because it is more competitive in a global market.

Do people think Ford is acting illegally or immorally by such actions?

 

I dont think they are acting either illegally or immorally a companies job is to make money but....

 

If companies keep going down this road then it will eventually come back to bite them.

 

If companies move abroad or carry on abusing immigrants paying the minimum wage and stop paying proper wages then who is it that is going to but their product?

It wont be the UK market thats for sure.The only way to up an economy is to put money in peoples pockets,people who arnt just going to send much of what they do earn home to pay their own morgages while our own property market is stagnet because British people are deemed too lazy to work when in actual fact cant afford to take many of the jobs being offered.

[Anna Glypta]

I dont think they are acting either illegally or immorally a companies job is to make money but....

 

If companies keep going down this road then it will eventually come back to bite them.

 

If companies move abroad or carry on abusing immigrants paying the minimum wage and stop paying proper wages then who is it that is going to but their product?

It wont be the UK market thats for sure.The only way to up an economy is to put money in peoples pockets,people who arnt just going to send much of what they do earn home to pay their own morgages while our own property market is stagnet because British people are deemed too lazy to work when in actual fact cant afford to take many of the jobs being offered.

 

But isn't that the whole point. Motor manufacturers in particular are moving production to low wage economies such as eastern Europe and China. This boosts the economies of countries like China who's middle classes are buying far more cars than we are. As long as European and other western consumers have enough to pay for goods made by cheap labour it will keep flooding in. If enough folk are priced out of the job market we have gone full circle and our work force will head for Poland and Rumania to pick up the jobs there although they might not be at the wage rates they were here.

[Staunton]

If Ford choses to offshore its production, to pay low wages in Romania, and to avoid billions in tax, then who profits? British workers at Ford, together with their suppliers, lose their jobs, and their Romanian replacements are reward with a meagre subsistence. Meanwhile HM Revenue and Customs loses those billions, and I am sure that the overstretched and poorly resourced tax regulators of Romania are not capable of standing up to the powerful and sophisticated corporate sector lawyers and City financial merchants in order to hold Ford accountable for tax purposes in their country.

 

The executives and shareholders make more money to swell their already sizeable bank account. British workers are magically transformed from strivers to 'skivers' overnight, tax continues to go missing, and the poor people of Romania become slaves to a machine designed to exploit the labour and resources of the most vulnerable communities on earth.

 

Multinational corporations are cynically abusing weak state structures across the globe in order to drive down production costs and avoid tax, for the exclusive benefit of their executives and shareholders.

[ricgem2002]

why dont the tax office just employ these superior accountants that the rich seem to benefit from there problem solved

[Staunton]

The conservative led coalition is engaged in the process of dismantling rather than strengthening HM Revenue and Customs. The neoliberals who have taken over the conservative party are the enemies of tax in all its manifestations. Multinational corporations that have increasing control over Western democracies hate paying tax, especially as they increase their involvement in public sector services - it makes no sense to pay into the system you are exploiting.