As John B reminds us. Here is Vodafone’s accounts.
Total tax paid seems to be higher than the UK statutory rate. That’ll play merry hell with Ritchie’s estimations of the tax gap, won’t it?
Most fun about Vodafone’s taxes
June 18th, 2012 · 8 Comments
Tags: Ragging on Ritchie
8 responses so far ↓
1 Nautical Nick // Jun 18, 2012 at 4:43 pm
I’m not defending Ritchie, not by a long chalk,but could it not be that the accounts reflect some sort of off-shoring of profits? ie that turnover and profits are lower than they “should” be? I’m not saying that’s true, just questioning.
2 Richard // Jun 18, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Nick, no.
That’s the consolidated accounts, so it includes any “offshore” subsidiaries.
3 Nautical Nick // Jun 18, 2012 at 8:51 pm
OK, good point, Richard. I’ll keep pondering.
4 Fred // Jun 18, 2012 at 10:19 pm
Does that make a negative tax gap ?
5 Jeff Wood // Jun 18, 2012 at 11:01 pm
Reading those Accounts makes me glad I deal only with very small private companies.
Note 6, on the taxes, seems to suggest that for 2012 company tax is payable only to foreign governments.
6 john b // Jun 19, 2012 at 8:24 am
Jeff: that is indeed the case. Tax is paid worldwide by the group at a rate of more than 26% of net profit – but none of this is paid in the UK.
The fact that worldwide tax is paid above 26% is unsurprising, given that Indian corporation tax is 30% and US Federal corporate tax is 34%. The fact that no tax at all is paid in the UK is perhaps more surprising.
(if Richie were a real investigative reporter rather than a blowhard, he’d dig Vodafone UK Limited’s accounts up from Companies House and work out quite how the hell they’ve managed to avoid making any kind of taxable profit).
7 john77 // Jun 19, 2012 at 12:17 pm
@ john b
I don’t normally defend Murphy but he can’t dig out Vodafone UK Ltd’s accounts from Companies House before they are filed. The 2010/11 accounts show a relatively small profit of £5.9m and a tax charge. So the answer as to why Vodafone plc paid no UK tax is presumably group relief in respect of a few billions of losses carried forward from previous years (something Murphy thinks should not be allowed).
8 John b // Jun 20, 2012 at 2:42 am
The point is, the gbp5m profit is clearly bollocks -well, either that or Vodafone UK are too incompetent to live. Assuming, as is probable, that they aren’t, they’re doing something cute to ensure profits are massively underreported.
Leave a Comment