Posts by spib.burfank

BT broadband in broad-based brownout and TITSUP incidents

Nah, plenty of bandwidth. And for once it's not the usual BT DNS snafu. This one seems to be a routing problem that's now into its second day.

I wonder at what point BT just give up and turn the whole network off and on again?

Vodafone didn't have a £6bn tax bill. Sort yourselves out, Lefties

Re: Grossly mileading and innacurate

"The fact that the last legal action was a win by the inland revenue is a matter of public record"

As is the ECJ ruling on UK CFC law not taking precedence over Community law. It was quite clear to HMRC that they'd lose in the ECJ. And it was also clear to the Government, which is why UK CFC law was subsequently changed to bring it into compliance.

If you had a shaky legal basis for having taxed thousands of controlled foreign corporations going back over many years, would you (a) quietly let bygones be bygones, or (b) force the issue to a final ruling and then have to pay back billions and billions in tax you shouldn't have taken?

only present 3*52 days/year

I wouldn't do that if I were you: that's no longer true (it wasn't statutory and one day the Revenue decided to start counting those days, contradicting what they'd advised people the rules were).

My HOUSE used to be a PUB: How to save the UK high street

Re: A missed opportunity

" I believe there is an opportunity for "shops" that represent various couriers and customers can drop off parcels and possibly collect as well"

You mean like Collect+? http://www.collectplus.co.uk

There's one in my corner shop, another in a nearby petrol station shop. Amazon use them for both deliveries and pickup.

Vodafone dodges UK corporation tax bill - AGAIN

Re: Interest in debt is their own fault

"Of course if you are planning to change the entire corporate tax system such that it's turnover rather than profits which are taxed then it poses some very difficult questions.'

Don't come here and use facts and reasoning - what people want to hear is their political prejudices amplified and reflected back to them. Go away to somewhere where rationality is appreciated and leave us to our circle jerk about the 1%, globalisation, and bankers.

Re: Interest in debt is their own fault

"Tax turnover and eliminate the loopholes at a stroke."

I like this idea. Because you'll be paying the tax just like you pay VAT. And then even someone like you could see that taxing a company is really just taxing its customers (and employees).

"Fight off paying anything in the courts for years"

Oops, a few typos in that. Let me fix that for ya:

"Using the courts to make the HMRC comply with the law, and eventually winning".

Of course, if you want to live in a country where people are randomly punished without an opportunity to argue their case in court then go right ahead: with your bolshy attitude you'll be one of the first to be put to work in the new salt mines.

Re: investing in UK!!!

"Ummm, care to explain why not?"

Because the word "investing" has changed its meaning since Gordon Brown became chancellor. It now means "borrow some money and spend it on people who will vote for you".

Re: Isn't this the same Vodafone...

"the story is that where there was once a tax obligation there isn't one."

You missed out the bit where there wasn't actually a tax obligation before either since UK law wasn't compliant with EC law on the taxation of Controlled Foreign Corporations in the EU. But hey, when you've got a narrative to run with then you gotta elide anything that contradicts it.

Re: Isn't this the same Vodafone...

"will use some means to show no net capital gain"

Gosh, that's amazing. All this tax I had to pay and there was "some means" to not pay it. Perhaps you could tell me what that might be so I too can show no net capital gain?

Patent law? It's all about Apples, Newton and iPads

Re: Timing is everything

"For me the very idea that without copyright no-one would innovate is retarded."

You didn't read Tim's piece, did you? He specifically addressed that very point. Go back and see if you can find where (hint: don't skim read the piece with an Internet era attention span)

"I was sort of with you right up until you made a case against national health."

You haven't understood a word of what Tim Worstall was saying.

Google, Apple, eBay shouldn't pay taxes - people should pay taxes

Re: Corps are people

"I will accept Corporations are people when Texas executes one"

They do. Every day. It's what happens after bankruptcy.

Re: I suggest a compromise

"I suggest a compromise."

"Hello! Is that the OECD? Yes? Good. I've got a proposal here from someone who writes HTML templates for a living. Yes, that's right, they've got a brilliant suggestion. All that work that you've done on a framework that's logical and consistent between countries? Yeah, you can forget that. Mr. HTML has gone and come up with a compromise that none of the thousands of people who've spent a lifetime understanding finance, accounting and economics have ever discovered. What's that? You've got a problem with your web site where it's not displaying foreign characters properly? Oh, I should ask my postman to sort that out: he's got a brilliant compromise on the handling of UTF-8 encoding."

Re: Why I pay the full amount of corporation tax due

"It is so that a company based in the UK does not have to pay two lots of tax, one in each country, on the same profits."

No it's not. Double taxation treaties do that. The EU is a *single market*. If you don't understand what that is then I suggest you take the time to learn.

"If you need to avoid tax to stay afloat"

Who says anything about staying afloat? Companies aren't there to simply exist: they're there to make money, and the more the better. Sheesh. You really need to get educated.

Re: oh dear

"why does the reg insist on giving valuable whiskey vouchers to idiot right-wing shills?"

Perhaps El Reg see their mission as informing and educating.. Fat chance with people like you: idiot socialists who know nothing and gets all upset when your deranged ideology is undermined by facts and logic.

Re: Nonsensical

"This nonsensical opinion will do more harm than good"

Says you. Compare your blathering to Tim. He produced facts and a chain of reasoning to justify his). You just pronounce yours ex-cathedra.

Re: In a closed system maybe...

"Unfortunately in the real world local companies cannot compete against the big boys because"

.. they have higher turnover against which to amortise fixed overheads. This is a fact of life, and tax is neither here nor there. Employment regulations, for example, hit smaller companies disproportionately. So does the cost of acquiring IP. Or arranging one's tax affairs.

It's always like this: it's how arithmetic works and why companies get more successful as they grow. Direct your complaints about the laws of arithmetic to God and stop whining about Starbucks.

Re: Lies, damned lies, and economic theory

"One does not simply "point out" the truth of one's ideas."

No, one justifies it and then tells people (by "pointing out") what one has concluded. But in this day and age, one does simply puke one's lazy opinions into the comment sections on the internet and demand equal weight with those who have actually done the reasoning before "pointing out" the results.

Re: I run a company

"I'm pretty sure my company pays taxes."

I'm pretty sure it wires the VAT every quarter to the Revenue too. So why are customers paying higher prices if your company is paying the VAT?

Then again, I'm pretty sure you're an idiot who didn't read the article and doesn't know what the word "burden" means.

"This article is so full of half truths it's hard to know where to begin."

And your qualifications to assess this are? You're an expert in JavaScript hacking? You read the Guardian?

I forgot, your lazy received opinions entailing less than ten seconds of thought are more valid than the collective lifetimes of people with genuine intellect and expertise.

Re: You've forgotten something important

"Corporate tax is payment for the service of continuing to pretend they exist."

Really? In that case you can pay me £100 for the service of not hitting you in the face with a brick.

"For that privilege we pay an extra $800 a year, and I think it's a good deal."

Not as good a deal as $0. Your happiness is misplaced: I suggest you google for "Stockholm syndrome"

Re: If taxing companies is equivalent to taxing people, would it work the other way too?

"How do you plan to reduce government size, deliver needed programmes and also re-employ former government workers effectively?"

1. Easy. Sack people. For example, we could abolish the entire Department of Education by allowing schools to be 'owned' by parents.

2. Take a long hard look at ourselves over that word "needed". Do we really *need* half of what government does? E.g. do we really *need* to oversee aid to China (and then beg them to lend us money)?

3. As to re-employing sacked government workers, well I'm sure their "higher skills and qualifications" (Copyright Polly Toynbee) will let them find excellent high-paying jobs. Or else we make them into Soylent Green. Either way's OK by me.

Re: If taxing companies is equivalent to taxing people, would it work the other way too?

You didn't read it properly. The burden is borne by THREE categories of people, the mix being dependent on several things (e.g. the state of the market in which the company operates, the bargaining power of the employees).

What excess costs? NHS and welfare is more than half of government spending yet I've never seen a crash team reviving a company in A&E.

Re: You're missing out on WHY corporations pay tax

"I pay for that protection in the form of the double taxation of profits"

Interesting theory you just made up. Going to tell us next that petrol tax is insuring road bridges against collapse?

Re: Small vs. Large companies

Same is true of regulations. Large companies love them: the fixed overheads of HR for employment regulation compliance gives a massive advantage over small companies.

Re: Thumbs down

You think that hiring more social workers in Rotherham contributes to economic growth, do you? Bless.

Re: Capitalism will be destroyed

Yes, let us erect a Marxist state to replace it. The Soviet Union was noted for having good coffee shops and a highly advanced computer industry.

Re: Über capitalist trolling from the reg yet again

"I run a company that trades internationally and I can tell you unequivocally that we do pay corporation tax."

Bless. You didn't understand a thing here, did you? I'm sure you pay the VAT over to the Revenue too. Do you claim that you're suffering the burden of the VAT? Perhaps you are just bright enough to understand the concept of tax burden and that it's the customer that bears the cost of VAT. The same is true of corporation tax: you might cut the cheque but it's other people (real people) that suffer the burden. That might be you as the owner (i.e. the shareholder). Or it might be your employees who suffer lower wages because of lower productivity because of lower investment because of less money to invest (do you understand how that works, or are you going to reject what evidently smarter people than you over decades have worked out?)

Re: Über capitalist trolling from the reg yet again

"This is a terrible article that uses sophistry to justify the unjustifiable."

No, it's using facts and a chain of logic. It upsets your world view, and you resent this, that's all.

Re: I run a company....

"I have a company and I've been paying tax"

You've not been paying attention though, have you? Tim's article is about who bears the burden of the tax. Is it your company or is it you the owner of the company? Clearly your company can't bear the burden because it's not a person - it's you because you own it (and possibly it's your employees because there's less money in your pocket to re-invest in the business).

You - like so many here - are confusing the entity who cuts the cheque to the Revenue with the people who bear the burden of the tax. For example, companies cut the cheque for VAT to the Revenue but is there anyone who seriously suggests that it's not the customer who is bearing the cost of the tax in the form of higher prices?

You really need to pay attention to what someone says and not just run off at the mouth because what the headline says upsets your world view.

Re: Companies should pay tax

You didn't understand a word of that article. Did you even read past the headline?

Re: Randoid bolllocks eh?

You didn't understand a word of the article, did you? Who, precisely, is "them"?

Re: Avoidance

Nice refutation. Did you win the school debate contest with that?

Re: Don't wanna pay taxes

Companies don't use schools'n'hospitals.

Re: The

"So why is it fair that because they are headquatered over seas that they dont have to pay tax on the profits?"

Amusingly, the very people who are complaining about American companies Google and Amazon not paying tax to the UK are arguing the opposite for Vodafone ("dodging £6bn of taxes") - demanding it pay to the UK taxes on money it earned in Germany selling phones to Germans. And I'm sure that there are lots of the same type of people in America who right now are demanding that Google and Amazon pay tax in America for money they earned in the UK.

Anyway, if British companies want to compete they should move their headquarters to Eire. And/or lobby the government to reduce corporation tax - because we know (if we actually read Tim's article) that the burden of corporation tax generally falls on the UK employees and UK customers anyway.

Re: Would raising personal taxation work?

Except you don't want to tax investment: it's what produces economic growth which makes everyone richer. You want to tax what has the least deadweight cost.

Tax isn't there to punish groups of people, it's there to raise money for government to invest in things that couldn't otherwise be invested in by private individuals or collectives.

Re: Would raising personal taxation work?

The burden of the tax falls on shareholders, employees and customers in a varying mix. If you want to tax these groups, then do it directly where you'll know what the impact will be rather than let the happenstance of the structure of any particular marketplace choose where the burden falls. Yes, that might mean dividend taxes (though Tim covered this in the 'deadweight' argument).

As to the "realistic wage" - what exactly is this? Wages aren't set so that we can all enjoy X-boxes and a three bedroom house. They are set based on the economics of what is produced by the job. If the value created is low no company would every pay a high wage. If the market for the skills is tight then the employee can capture a large share of the economic value (look at premier league football where the employees - the players - have captured the lion's share of the value).

Investment raises the economic value of an employee. One who drives a forklift is much more productive - and the value much higher - than several who manually lift sacks. If the return on investment is low then there's no money to buy a fork lift and the wages for sack-lifters is low because the value each creates is low. Taxing investment retards investment which stops productivity growing which retards the value produced by an employee which retards the growth in their wages. This is what Tim was talking about.

Re: So why these companies don't pay better salaries then their competitors?

Do you seriously think that other people far smarter than you haven't actually considered and then rejected these points? What is it with people today that think that expertise and a lifetime's study count for nothing compared to the "I reckon" witless opinion reached in mere moments?

Re: Good article

Few? Try "none".

Re: Or rather...

No, it will be reflected in three things: the price customers pay, in the wages of the employees and the returns to the shareholders of the company. The mix of who bears the tax will vary depending on the market, the bargaining power of the employees, etc. Given that who pays is a fairly random happenstance, taxing companies is a very blunt instrument indeed. Surely if you want to hit employees or hit shareholders or hit customers, it's best to shape something to achieve that directly rather than hope the random tax incidence is what you wanted?

Re: Randoid bolllocks eh?

But Tim, we're living in an era where facts are mere opinions, to be refuted by shouting "bollocks" when they upset one's world view.

Re: Thumbs up

Judging by the responses here, the IT industry is no longer staffed by the smart libertarians that founded computing but largely by the witless left-wing people that Britain has been manufacturing so efficiently for decades.

You asserting it's bollocks doesn't make it so. Given the clear chain of reasoning supported by facts that Tim's laid out, and your witless response, it's pretty clear why you've found the world such an incomprehensible place.

Shut up? It's quite amazing how stupid people think that shouting down smarter people is how rational debate works.

Re: Results of the OECD are based on cross-country regressions

Yeah, I think they've thought it through a little more than your I-didn't-bother-to-read-it-myself-but-I'm-so-smart-I-didn't-need-to opinion.