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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

This quote stuck in my craw:

"Google said it complies with all tax rules, and its investment in various European countries helps their economies. In the U.K., “we also employ over 2,000 people, help hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow online, and invest millions supporting new tech businesses in East London,” the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement..."

Everybody contributes to the economy, not just entities like Google, and they pay a higher tax rate for the income they derive through that contribution. Bringing these issues up is asking for double credit.

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They are pointing out that they pay taxes on tangibles such as salaries, VAT and business rates. Corporation tax is based on the fungible concept of profit and really is unworkable.

Yeah, OK, however it is paid by all the other companies working in the UK, Europe etc... and many have not the means to register at Bermuda...

I can bet they can manage pay no VAT (because this is a compensated tax, you deduce what you spend...).

I may agree: corp. tax may be unworkable but saying "we are honest, we contribute to the economy" is flatly insulting to the other companies which cannot get away with it like Bermuda-based Google.

> Yeah, OK, however it is paid by all the other companies working in the UK, Europe etc... and many have not the means to register at Bermuda...

They all have the means to register in Bermuda (or Cyprus or several other countries used to offshore money), it's relatively simple for an accountant to setup, but there's little point as the UK doesn't have any easy way to get the money back into the country from offshore without paying the required amount of corporation tax; so there's no point in sending it overseas in the first place.

The US does have periodic amnesties that allow offshore money to be brought back into the US at a reduced tax rate which makes hoarding it overseas for a few years financially worthwhile.

Of course, there's nothing stopping a UK company with good cashflow (which is required if you're going to be keeping lots of cash overseas in the hope of a future amnesty) from moving their headquarters to the US and doing exactly what these US companies are doing to pay little/no UK corporation tax.

The small team of NPR's Planet Money has two offshore companies. It's not really hard or expensive to setup: it costs less than $800/company to create one in Belize.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/27/157421340/how-to-s...

Everyone pays VAT, but as a matter of economics it is, like a sales tax, bourne by the consumer, not intermediate producers. Salaries are deductible everywhere I'm aware of, and "payroll taxes," although they are nominally collected from the employer, are, in the concensus of most economists, mostly if not entirely bourne by employees in the form of lower wages.

Companies don't pay VAT. It's somewhat more complicated than that.

Exactly.

Companies get profits proportional to the value of goods they provide to the economy.

Saying that somehow $100 earned by Google is more beneficial than the $100 earned by a small dental gabinet is extremely stupid. Both companies should pay taxes on their profits and none of them can claim it does more good for its money than the other.

To me, what Google tries to say is pure bullshit.

They are just being polite. For $2B a year I doubt they care what the public thinks. And anyway every corporation does it. Talk to your congressman.

I would, but I have to wait inline behind a portion of that $2B that's being used to make it $3B next time.

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