Thursday, April 19, 2012
My non-shopping list. Where I won’t be spending any more money until they stop avoiding tax
12 responses
More useful information can be found on the ZDNet and the BBC websites.
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Starbucks has paid only £8.6million in tax in 14 years of trading in Britain.In this time Starbucks made more than £3billion in revenues, and used clever accounting techniques to minimise its tax contributions. Starbucks posted a UK loss of £33million on sales of £398million, which meant that it paid no corporation tax. It does pay VAT on in-store hot drinks. Starbucks reduced its tax contribution in three key ways: By paying royalties to another division of the company; by buying coffee beans through a Swiss firm; and by funding its British division through loans which are charged at an unusually high interest rate, according to experts. | |
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The US Internet search giant Google avoids paying hundreds of millions of pounds in UK corporation tax by legally diverting much of its British revenues via Ireland. The UK rate of corporation tax was 28% last year, much higher than Ireland’s 12.5%.I’m happy to exchange my Google search history and other use data for the use of Google services, but I won’t be paying them anything through pay per click advertising, using Google checkout or buying anything related to Google. | |
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Amazon’s UK business is now owned by Amazon EU Sarland the UK operation is classed only as an “order fulfillment” business. Payments go directly to Luxembourg. The UK business is simply a delivery organization, despite employing 2,265 people. UK sales over the past three years were between £7.6bn and £10.3bn. A likely profit of £266m-£360m and yielded UK corporation tax of up to £100m.However, in the nine years between 2003 and 2011, the UK-registered company has reported a cumulative net tax bill of just £3m – of which £1.9m was incurred in 2011. I spent £1,200 on 35 Amazon purchases in the 6 months prior to April 2012. I now buy nothing from Amazon and source everything I need elsewhere. In an email to me, Amazon said “Amazon serves millions of customers throughout Europe and we pay all applicable taxes in all the jurisdictions within which we operate.” | |
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Boots was bought out by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in 2008. Boots, which has a 150-year history in Nottingham, moved the registered head office of its parent company, Alliance Boots, to Zug, Switzerland- home to 29,000 registered companies.The Boots registered office is housed in a Swiss post office – an anonymous PO box alongside dozens of others. The company denies that its registration in Zug is a device to avoid UK corporation tax, but the tax Boots pays has dropped as a result of this move from 33% to 3%, saving £150m a year.We have a Boots in Newcastle Emlyn. It’s easy to avoid them and use the alternative excellent independent chemist. Who I know, and who pays his tax. | |
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Following its takeover by US multinational Kraft, Cadbury is undergoing a ‘restructuring’ which will channel profits made by the British brand through Switzerland. It is estimated that this move will cost the UK taxpayer £60 million a year, money that Kraft can well afford – it pocketed £590m in profit in 2010.It’s hard to avoid eating chocolate which isn’t made by, or owned by Cadbury or Nestle, but it must be possible. | |
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Walkers Crisps from my home city of Leicester markets itself as quintessentially British: the fields, the soil, the potatoes, the farmers, the factories and of course, Gary Linker.Something less British about Walkersis their profits, which are channeled to Switzerland.An investigation by the Guardian showed their avoidance tactics go back to 1999 when the business suddenly became a Swiss company.In the initial year the move meant we lost £10m in tax; in subsequent years it has been closer to £20m a year. HMRC went after them and they gave £40m back, less than a third of what we would have received had they kept the profits here. | |
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Tesco control 30% of the UK grocery market and have over 2,000 stores in the UK. In 2010 they made a profit of £3.4bn, yet they will still go to great lengths to avoid paying tax. Using complex legal structures Tesco has avoided stamp duty land tax to the tune of £90-£100m and £23m in stamp duty. Tesco has its headquarters in the sleepy Hertfordshire town of Cheshunt. Something else that you can find there is Cheshunt Overseas, a limited liability partnership that has enabled Tesco to avoid £16m in tax through overseas business rules. | |
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The Vodaphone saga has been running for 10 years and has been exposed by Private Eye Magazine. The issue started when Vodafonebought the German engineering company Mannesmann for €180bn, using an offshore company in Luxembourg.The UK taxman perused Vodaphone for all the information on the deal. HMRC after much negotiation cut a deal whereby Vodafone would pay £800m, with another £450m payable over five years and, remarkably, an agreement that the arrangement can carry on into the future with a promise of no challenge from HMRC. The amount of money forgone is estimated to be £6 billion. | |
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12 Responses to “My non-shopping list. Where I won’t be spending any more money until they stop avoiding tax” [latest at bottom]
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Man Trafod - Rhowch sylwad yma
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Bydd eich ateb yn cael ei cymedroli, ac ni fydd yn ymaddangos yn syth. Medrwch paratoi eich tecst yn y rhaglen word cyn ei rhoi yn y bocs, ond ni fydd elfennau megis trwmder tecst a lliw yn ymddangos.
I stopped using Amazon when the Guardian broke the story at the beginning of the month. It’s UK operation is classed as ‘order fulfilment’ business – a delivery organisation. When I make a purchase from a .co.uk shop, I expect all taxes to be paid in the UK. E-mailing Amazon gets a brief and unsatisfactory response, but still worth doing.
Jane asplash.com]
Interesting list, and food for thought. You might be interested in taking a look at my website, http://www.globalfightback.com – I will investigate the above companies further and might feature them there. Best wishes.
I see that the Guardian have added Asda to the list of tax avoiders. Any idea which supermarkets I can shop at?
The Co-op would seem a good bet.
Worth noting that Starbucks does NOT pay VAT. The consumer pays VAT – Starbucks merely collects it on behalf of the Government.
nice to see a clear list! i’m not sure how i’ll avoid google… eek, but the rest of them no problem!!
this is such a basic and important issue – happy non-shopping everyone
from anna at boodaville
Hi Anna,
Yes it’s difficult to avoid Google, but we *can* reduce our usage of the Big G. Google makes money from selling its office services (Google Apps – Mail, Docs, and a host of others), by selling advertising (Google Adwords pay per click) and by selling information about people’s searches and the sites they visit (so called data harvesting) as recorded by Google Search Engines and gathered by Google Analytics on individual web sites.
1. Use a different search Engine. I use the small but independent and powerful http://www.duckduckgo.com
2. Use Google services if you have to but don’t pay for any. OK, they still benefit from harvesting your usage stats but you can reduce this a bit by going to https://www.google.com/dashboard and logging in with your Gmail or other credentials. You can stop Google collecting some information from here.
3. Never click on Google sponsored adverts embedded into other sites as each click pays some money to Google.
4. Block cookies being placed by sites using Google Analytics. This can be done simply by installing a Google add-one for your web browser
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
5. Don’t buy anything using Google Checkout. Choose other payment methods.
Other ideas gratefully received…
Thank you for the information, I have given all this information and the site address to all my friends and family and until these companies stop using aggressve tax avoidance and prove this, we will not give these companies our money.
This is a useful round-up, thank you. However, it seems slightly ironic that the site links to Google translate! In addition to the fact that this is not boycotting Google, the translations produced are at best extremely clunky and often downright misleading and incorrect.
Hi Heather,
Thanks for visiting Webs Wonder and leaving a comment.
How to avoid Google. That’s a big one isn’t it. It’s a bit like trying to avoid using the roads to get around. Hopefully my replies made to an earlier comment may be of some use.
You are too kind saying that using Google translate is ironic given the subject of this post. The word is hypocritical, but given that I would hardly have a business if I didn’t advise people how to do well in Google searches, which is also hypocritical, I have to point both ways at once on that one.
What I always encourage people to do however is avoid giving Google your money or your data. Use the alternatives where possible.
Thanks for this information.
What I’d like is to be able to contact someone at Google to let them know I won’t be using their services. If enough people do this they may get the message. Currently they think they’re too big to be affected. Any details of relevant contact?
Also can I use your boycott logos when I send the message to forums, friends & colleagues to add more impact?
Hi Winifred, Google sells data about your surfing habits, not just from the Google search, but from most sites you visit which use the “Google Analytics” service to record visitor behaviour. So if you really want to stop them profiting from your surfing, use a cookie blocker such as Ghostery and use the Firefox or Opera browser. Not Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. http://www.ghostery.com.
Please feel free to use any logo from this page you wish.