Sunday, 31 January 2016

The big G sucking taxes to Bermuda

The biggest search engine in the world is Google, and it is this company who are sucking the lifeblood out of the UK. They do this by taking business from here and not paying their tax. In a wonderful sweetheart deal with HMRC they only pay £130 million in backdated tax.  This company should not be allowed to do business in the UK. It should be fined to the hilt for tax avoidance. By this I mean the real understanding of why tax is in place. It is clear from the financial instruments in place they are able to move money around and classify it as something else. So why is the UK government also lobbying to protect Google's tax haven in Bermuda.

In watching an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, 31.01.2016. Marr interviews Peter Barron and asked him some questions about the tax the G had paid. When watching this man be interviewed there were two things which came to mind. Firstly Marr is a crap interviewer and is afraid of asking difficult questions and pursuing them like a pit-ball. The politicians must love him because it is a chance to self publicise. Secondly there was no way this man could answer any questions and he was not the CEO who should of been fielding questions about dodgy tax deals. It was clearly very early this interview would be a white wash of excuses and so it was. Peter Barron by being interviewed was putting his head on the block, for if he did come out of this interview poorly he would be sacked from a lucrative job. He came out of it, but with only a few scratches and not a savaging which he should of had. He could not say how much profit google had made, he avoided such questions by diverting his answers to how the UK tax system works. As if we need an explanation for this. What we needed was an explanation about google. Why don't google pay their fair taxes on the actual profit they make? Why do they use financial instruments in order to dodge paying taxes? Why are they building at enormous expense 3 buildings in London. The pictures of one such building were advertised in the Telegraph.  See here the luxury green velour room where employees can sit and think. A room which was obviously funded from profits, but for such profits to be spent in this way on this building certainly does mean google is avoiding paying their fair tax.

There has to be no doubt in anyone's mind this sweetheart deal google has made is costing the tax payer money. For unpaid tax means less spent on education, the NHS and the emergency services to say the least. Not even considering how tax is also distributed to local authorities so they can provide the services real people use every day in the boroughs they live in. The UK government should be utterly ashamed of how it has conducted itself, it is Tory led ministers who have pushed and accepted this deal from the HMRC, it is George Osborne who is responsible for accepting it and his fellow cabinet members who have failed to stand up for the country who voted them into power in the first place.

Shame on google and shame on this Tory government.

No comments: