Reply to post: Re: I'm not sure that targeting specific companies is the way forward.

Re: I'm not sure that targeting specific companies is the way forward.

My take on it is that revenue taxes should be deliberately punitive and painful and applied individually to companies that have taken the piss for a multi year period, following which they can decide if they'd like to pay normal taxes on profits without playing games or if they'd like to keep revenue taxes.

That's the problem though - the companies haven't legally taken the piss, they've quite literally played by the rules and obeyed the law. You may feel it morally wrong that in doing so they have paid so little tax, but that not withstanding, they have paid what was legally due. If the law is to be set based upon moral judgements then we need to first determine who's moral judgements they will be - everyones idea of ethics and morals are different and personal to them.

I'd say tax them at 15% of revenue (or higher) until Her Majesties Revenue & Customs have collected around 120% of what they think was been evaded by that company and then we could start talking about returning to a percentage tax on profits if they promise to be good.

You don't seem to understand the difference between evasion and avoidance. Tax evasion is the process of breaking the law in order to minimise the tax paid, rather than the tax due. Tax avoidance is following the law in order to minimise the tax due and thus the tax paid. It's completely legal.

My concern is not how legislators propose to change the system to catch a few companies that are avoiding more tax than the legislators would like, but of the unintended consequences of passing such law. Today they target Google, Amazon etc, but tomorrow they WILL be targetting your local pub, bacon serving cafe etc with the same taxes. Income tax was brought about to fund the war with France. It just never went away. VAT was never intended to apply to all goods - it was supposed to be a luxury goods tax.

That said, if a business pays tax on turnover and makes a loss, does that imply that they can defray 2% of that loss onto the EU? Currently losses one year are deductible the next, so we need careful thought several steps ahead of where we are now, before launching such a tax. The problem with most tax legislation is the people writing it up assume it will be interpreted the way they wish and they assume companies and individuals will not seek to minimise payments due; neither of which has ever been true.