Thread: Brexit - It's Still On!

indeed, we need hard brexit, anything less is not acceptable

you people need to prove to the world you won't be taken for granted by the EU, and you need to show them what you are made of

tell Barnier to "fuck himself" to speed up that silly process,

^ The talk of a hard brexit and all the probems it will bring is ramping up and will continue to do so...to ensure everyone is behind the maybot when she waves the white flag and saves the day.

Could be bot's cunning plan to stay in?

Originally Posted by jabir

Could be bot's cunning plan to stay in?

No doubt about it. Looking forward to the politicians explaining their windfall bank deposits and post dismissal awarded directors positions.

Few scandals have recently aroused more howls of outrage than revelations of how many large companies are making billions of pounds of profit in Britain while paying little or no tax.

David Cameron, having put this “tax avoidance” at the top of the G8 agenda last summer, was at it again on Thursday. Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts committee, never stops protesting about a practice she calls “immoral”.

Last week, grilling the business tax director of HM Revenue & Customs, she asked why HMRC hadn’t brought some “show cases” against the firms responsible, to highlight what a scandal this has become.


Certainly, the sums lost to the Treasury are mind-boggling.

Google, based for tax purposes in Dublin, earned £11 billion from Britain between 2006 and 2011, but paid only £10 million in tax. Starbucks, based in Holland, in 2011 earned £395 million in the UK, but paid only £6 million in tax. Amazon, based in Luxembourg, had UK sales of £3.35 billion in 2011 but paid only £1.8 million in tax. Equally clever at avoiding UK tax are our largely foreign-owned water companies, such as Thames, which in 2011 made a £550  million profit and paid no tax at all. Ever longer grows the list of leading companies avoiding UK tax in this way, from Apple and Vodafone to BHS and Pizza Express – so that estimates of what the Treasury is losing are as much as £120 billion a year, equal to a fifth of the Government’s entire income.


Astonishingly, however, entirely missing from all the outrage is the simple explanation of how and why this racket has come into being. It all stems from the “four freedoms” laid down in the founding treaty of the European Union, especially the freedoms of “capital” and “establishment”, which entitle firms to move all their income to the country where they want their tax base to be, to give them the smallest tax liability.

This has completely destroyed the sovereign right of national governments to levy tax in a country where income is earned. Google, Amazon, Apple and the rest can thus quite legally channel all their earnings wherever tax rates are lowest.


In 1992, a further massive loophole was opened up by the Maastricht Treaty, which, in preparation for the single currency, extended the “freedom of capital” to countries outside the EU, including tax havens such as the Cayman Islands or Jersey, with even lower tax rates. This is how, for instance, our water companies manage to pay so little tax, despite making profits averaging at 30 per cent a year. They have also learnt the cleverest trick of all, which is to borrow huge sums from their tax-haven-based owners, at artificially high rates of interest, which can then be offset as a business expense against their profits, shrinking their tax liability still further.


Even more disturbing is the way no one ever publicly admits that this is what makes such a colossal racket perfectly legal. Mr Cameron keeps strangely quiet about it. When Mrs Hodge was asking the HMRC’s man last week why it doesn’t bring “show cases” against these firms, he made no mention of the EU dimension, despite knowing that HMRC has already put this to legal test in a historic case in the European Court of Justice in 2007. The UK comprehensively lost.

The greatest financial damage inflicted on us by our membership of the EU has thus become the most embarrassing “elephant in the room” of all.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-billions.html

Originally Posted by OhOh

By Thames I presume you are referring to Thames water.

All UK water companies are governed by OFWAT, a UK government department. As such they are allowed a return on the investments made on a 5 year cycle. OFWAT reviews their profits, losses and future expenditure every 5 years. OFWAT determines the charges the water companies are allowed to levy their customers which can be challenged but ultimately, OFWAT has the final determination. All water companies are compared with each other to determine best industry practice, costs and expenditure/customer, business methods, types of customers, geographical layouts/densities....... All the details are available at OFWAT's site for the curious and all companies check the other companies determinations and appeal if they want too.

Some companies have higher costs than others. For example Thames who run London's systems have higher road rental charges than say Essex water. More planning and contingencies apply to digging up a central London road than say rural Wiltshire. Londons's systems are much older, in worse repair than say Milton Keynes. Some water companies have more customers to take care of so Thames Water may be spending £1,000m a year whilst Severn Trent might spend only £300m a year,

So, some water companies make more profits than others, because, they are a larger company.

Quite what this fucking waffle has to do with Thames using dubious legal devices to minimise paying tax I have no idea.

What was the point of your shit post exactly?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

with Thames using dubious legal devices

One man's "dubious legal advice" is another's saviour from the electric chair. If anybody is concerned enough let them put their arguments before a judge and jury.

But taking legal actions and being bound by the results is something you don't agree with, it seems.

Originally Posted by OhOh

One man's "dubious legal advice" is another's saviour from the electric chair. If anybody is concerned enough let them put their arguments before a judge and jury.

But taking legal actions and being bound by the results is something you don't agree with, it seems.

What on earth are you blabbering about?

Answer the fucking question:

What does your fucking waffle about OFWAT have to do with Thames using dubious legal devices to minimise paying tax?

^ Why are you picking up on a 5 year old article? Doesn't EU directive 2016/1164 counter this problem?

Is the UK more upset that tax avoidance is being addressed by the EU and some HQ based in UK no longer need to be there?

Originally Posted by Troy

^ Why are you picking up on a 5 year old article? Doesn't EU directive 2016/1164 counter this problem?

Obviously not.

Michael Gove has launched a searing attack on an audience of water company bosses – accusing their firms of avoiding billions of pounds in tax, overpaying executives and failing to properly invest in infrastructure.

The Environment Secretary said some companies had been funnelling almost all their profits to shareholders, while having “hidden behind complex financial structures” in off-shore tax havens to avoid the Inland Revenue.

<snip>


The Cabinet minister said the companies had “set up multi-layered corporate structures of dizzying complexity” involving multiple subsidiaries with some based in offshore tax havens.

Mr Gove went on: “The use of these offshore entities makes company affairs more opaque and their financial activities less transparent, and customers have an absolute right to question their use.

“As well as Thames, Southern and Yorkshire – have also set up offshore financial structures in the Cayman Islands.”

He accepted that water companies had initially set up the structures to enable smoother access to global bond markets, but then pointed out that the rules related to the issue had now changed, before accusing the companies of maintaining the structures to “avoid proper scrutiny”.

<snip>


In a dissection of the industry’s financial affairs, he then turned to how they had structured debt to maximise their gains.

He explained that regulator Ofwat asks customers to pay water companies an amount that allows firms to maintain a prudent balance sheet divided on a 60:40 basis between debt and equity.

The 40 per cent is designed explicitly as a ‘buffer zone’, he said, that protects companies from financial shocks and to ensure they have enough money to invest.

But Mr Gove told his audience: “The banks and funds which own these companies have increased their debt levels to nearly 80 per cent – or 83 per cent, in the case of Thames.

“And because the debt levels are higher than those assumed by Ofwat – and the repayments are cheaper than they would be on equity returns, and are paid out before tax to boot – the companies have made supernormal gains.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8235531.html

^ EU directive 2016/1164 comes into effect on 1st January 2019.

I am interested to know how Gove plans to stop this tax avoidance in a post-Brexit UK.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Thames using dubious legal devices

Dubious is somebody's definition. I suspect others believe differently.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Dubious is somebody's definition. I suspect others believe differently.

You're very fucking tiresome when you waffle.

Why don't you read Gove's comments above and stop focusing on one word because you haven't got a fucking clue what you're on about.

Harry, why do you always sound so angry, you stupid hooligan bully

Originally Posted by buriramboy

A clean Brexit thankfully looking more likely, Doris is doomed no support for her Chequers agreement which is leaving in name only. Tories thankfully coming their senses and going to dump her and the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for will become reality.

nothing is going to be clean with a hard brexit,

Originally Posted by buriramboy

A clean Brexit thankfully looking more likely, Doris is doomed no support for her Chequers agreement which is leaving in name only. Tories thankfully coming their senses and going to dump her and the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for will become reality.

What is looking more likely is a second referendum. The consequences of leaving is becoming known now and start to sink in , the government does not dare to take responsibility for a hard brexit or a bad deal brexit so they will once again ask the populace.

May could never survive manoeuvres for a second referendum, and I doubt her successor would.

Originally Posted by lom

What is looking more likely is a second referendum. The consequences of leaving is becoming known now and start to sink in , the government does not dare to take responsibility for a hard brexit or a bad deal brexit so they will once again ask the populace.

It would be sensible, I don't know about likely.

May is where she is because it's tacitly accepted in the party that anyone's career would be toast as leader in these circumstances.

Anyone predicting what the situation will be like in two years time is basically taking a stab in the dark.

Been posted before but now seems more like reality than a joke.

Originally Posted by cyrille

It would be sensible, I don't know about likely.

May is where she is because it's tacitly accepted in the party that anyone's career would be toast as leader in these circumstances.

Anyone predicting what the situation will be like in two years time is basically taking a stab in the dark.

I've always had the feeling it will be a crushing anticlimax.

You may well be right...let's hope so.

Originally Posted by cyrille

It would be sensible, ............ Anyone predicting what the situation will be like in two years time is basically taking a stab in the dark.

But you are suggesting that the current fairytale or your educated perception of the "real" fcats, is grounds to make another, possibly as misguided as the previous BREXIT decision?