The latest ignorant story on corporate tax:
Downing Street faces more flak over company tax arrangements after it emerged that a major Government contractor is funnelling profits into an offshore haven.
Telereal Trillium has a £3.2?billion contract to manage buildings such as job centres for the Department for Work and Pensions. It also manages property used by the DVLA.
While the company paid full UK corporation tax last year, it funnelled £163?million of its post-tax profits in the form of share dividends into a parent company based in the British Virgin Islands where there is a zero rate of income and corporation tax.
Those, those bastards! You mean they paid the full amount of tax due and then took the remainder home? What cunts eh?
Speaking of which:
And Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research UK, said: ‘The Government says it is committed to transparency. That means it should only buy from companies in places where we can find out who the real owners are, which you can’t in the British Virgin Islands.’
There are other ways. Like looking at Trillium\’s own web page:
Telereal Trillium ordinary shares are owned by the B Pears 1967 Trust and William Pears Group EBT; preference shares are held by The William Pears Group and the William Pears Group EBT.
I assume, but don\’t know, that this is this lot. And at least one, possibly three of those, aren\’t actually taxable anyway. Plus one of them seems to be very similar indeed to Margaret, Lady Hodge\’s set up.
But what bastards, eh? Paying all the tax that\’s due! Taxpaying bastards is bastards now, eh?
WTF?
The bastards. If they had that £163M that they didn’t need, they should have sent it to the Treasury instead!
(Am I getting it right?)
It’s a government full of people who inherited money, and don’t know how things work; why are the results surprising?
First they complain about companies not based here not paying corporation tax to the UK government on their turnover. Then they complain about companies who do pay their taxes here paying post tax dividends to shareholders.
I get the impression sometimes, including reading comments in the media on a story, that some people really do not want to have companies existing at all.
It’s not the government that is the main cause of this idiocy, it is Labour and their slimy cohorts in the NGO community. The government have not covered themselves in glory, but the main crims here are (as usual) from the left.
Ken, the Government is very much to blame for surrendering to the Left’s ghastly narrative at the first possible opportunity. Without a good political counterbalance this tax nonsense will continue to run further from common sense. One just hopes the general ineffectiveness of Government will prevent any real damage.
@ CHF & Pat
WHY are you blaming the government for the attacks from a *shadow* minister and Murphy on a legitimate business for legitimately paying a dividend out of after-tax profits?
FYI the present government is full of people who have actually done a real job, unlike Brown’s
The point they appear to be trying to make is that those nasty foreigners not only come here to steal our jobs and claim our benefits they are now stealing our profits as well.
There is also a secondary point hidden in there that Government shouldn’t give contracts to nasty foreigners anyway.
And as soon as a shadow spokesman gets involved we should smell a rat and ooh look at this from the Telereal site:
In 1998, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) transferred ownership and management of its estate to Telereal Trillium under a 20-year contract known as PRIME. In 2003, the PRIME contract was expanded to include an additional 1,100 properties relating to the Employment Services estate.
fast and loose with that
@ Pat
My response to you ended up being quite long..
http://thethoughtgang.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/damned.html
It’s worth a note that this business is based on running assets acquired from the Govt between about 1998 and 2005.
Who was running it all then, we wonders?
John77 #7
I agree with you that the attacks are coming from the left, but I think the basic premise of CHF and Pat is correct. The underlying narrative has been surrendered to the extreme left. It is the responsbility of the Conservative party to put forward the centre-right, pro-market analysis; it simply isn’t doing that at the moment. I do wonder if today’s Conservative ministers actually believe in the market.
P.S. Wrting “believe in the market” feels ridiculous. Do we write about “believing in water”?
Cameron started this nonsense with his disgraceful public shaming of Jimmy Carr. He established the precedent that the Prime Minister would encourage the public to hate you if you didn’t pay “enough” tax. The Left know it’s open season because Cameron opened it.
I agree with those blaming Cameron and Cronies.
They should have stood up–at the first opportunity–and said No! Companies serve “the community” by delivering goods and services they want; taxes are passed on the consumers and shareholders; there is NO ISSUE here.
But Nooooo. The moron simply fanned the flames, and it’s going to end badly.