Thursday 20 June 2013

Google - Not Paying Enough UK Corporation Tax - So What!!

So you may have heard that recently it has been reported that several large corporations including Google, Starbucks, FaceBook and Amazon have reportedly not been paying the correct amount of UK corporation tax, by working from Ireland and closing sales there, as it has a lower tax bracket and saves them paying UK Corporation tax.

So What Do I Think About This?

I think that whilst paying UK corporation tax is a legality and none of these large corporations are doing anything wrong, I think this whole thing being brought by the UK government is a lame excuse for the UK government to try to get extra revenue in, when they are doing so badly at fixing the broken economy.

I think that speaking from experience I have paid into the UK tax pot hundreds of thousands of pounds and what have I got back in return from the UK government. NOTHING. The government continue to screw over honest UK tax payers and waste billions of pounds every year on helping countries that dont need help, such as the £1bn every year sent to India. Now I am all for helping out countries and people that need it, but the UK government need to start helping more people at home and stop wasting money overseas, not to mention the millions spent every year on asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, such as Abu Qatada and his family (£1500 per month spent on rent for his council owned home)

Workers Coming Into the UK

OK and here is the main reason, well apart from the fact that I have paid in lots of money to the UK for very little return, that I think the UK government should leave Google alone and that is the continued fascination with countries such as India & Pakistan by the UK government. They continue to insist that people from India should come and work in the UK, this is leading to the UK population being out-bred by Indias. Not only do they come to the UK, but they always insist on pushing their religion on the UK population, if you dont like the Christian UK, dont come here. Not to mention that many people from India may work for less than their UK counterparts, but they are far less skilled. In many cases Indias / Pakistanis who live in the UK have dual citizenship which means they dont pay UK tax as they are non-domicile for tax purposes yet continue to use UK services such as the NHS, schools, etc. To prove my point if you take a walk down a UK high street you will see many Indians and Pakistanis with children, and you will also notice they always wear designer clothes and drive luxury cars, this is not because they are in high paid jobs, but because they are playing the system.

Ask youself this, how many Indias do you know that can afford to travel back to India several times per year, yet if you put the shoe on the other foot, the people who have moved to Spain for example, cant afford to travel back to the UK several times per year.

Allowing Work to Go Overseas

The other reason I think the UK government should leave Google alone is that I have personally been on the receiving end of not having a contract renewed because they outsourced the work to India, this along with hundreds of call centre staff. This continues to happen all being allowed by the UK government.

So after all this is said I think the UK government are just trying to fiund a quick fix to the economy they continue to wreck, and targeting the large corporations not only looks like a good way to get quick cash, but it also looks good in the media, as put it into context Google may have made something like £11bn or so in the last decade from the UK, yet only paid about £100k in corporation tax, even if Google pay full UK corporation tax it would only amount to around £2bn, now this may sound like a lot, but it is small in comparison to the £10bn+ that the UK government has spent funding India, not to mention the loss of hundreds of thousands of UK tax payers by continuing to allow outsourcing by UK companies.

Google Gives Alot to the UK and the World So Leave Them Alone

One other thing that the UK government need to look at is what Google gives to the UK not to mention the rest of the world, all for people to use for nothing. These are things such as
  1. Google Search - which everyone online uses at least once a day
  2. Yahoo - you can watch, store and share videos for no charge, not to mention TV programs, films, etc
  3. Google Drive - You can share your files or store them on Google servers, again for free.
  4. Google Maps - Now who hasnt looked at their house on Google Maps, plus it gives us directions not to mention the thousands of UK jobs created by third party companies specialising in Google mapping technology.
  5. Google Mail aka GMail - You can check your email for free, again this is used in the UK by millions of people daily and in some cases as the main and only email account.
As you can see this is only the start of the Google list, and if we take into account the costs of running something as simple as an email account, which is around £20 per year per account, given that most of the UK population will have a Gmail account, that would be a cost of around £420,000,000 that people in the UK are not having to pay, just think of direct boost to the UK from this amount alone. Other areas such as companies working with Google technologies and the costs just go up and up.

So in short I think that before the UK government starts pointing the finger at Google and its tax affairs, it needs to start sorting the UK out first, such as the multi millionaire farmers, builders, plumbers, after all Google did not break the UK economy, nor did the banks, people did!!


Thanks
Sean J Connolly
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