[governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Facebook paid £2.9m tax on £840m profits

[Michael Leibrandt]

Well, having started as a tax lawyer some decades ago, I remember pretty 
well the discussions we already had at that time for example in the 
respectice OECD working groups. But it needs to be said that we are looking 
at tax avoidance, not tax fraud. And all those preferential rules and 
regulations have been introduced by democratic governments after listening 
to the national stakeholders, so we can't blame the companies for making use 
of it. Without the political will to make individual countries more 
attractive for international business by offering tax incentives, schemes 
like the well-known "Double Irish in a Dutch Sandwhich" wouldn't be 
possible. By the way, this is not only about big companies - next time you 
by music from U2 or the Stones you should be aware they are doing exactly 
the same...

Michael, Berlin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roland Perry" <roland at internetpolicyagency.com>
To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 12:16 AM
Subject: Re: [governance] FW: [Dewayne-Net] Facebook paid £2.9m tax on £840m 
profits


> In message <00a001cde14d$204533f0$60cf9bd0$@gmail.com>, at 12:36:02 on
> Sun, 23 Dec 2012, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> writes
>
>>A Facebook spokeswoman said: "Facebook complies with all relevant
>>corporate regulations including those related to filing company
>>reports and taxation."
>
> It's taken a long time for legal tax avoidance schemes to become a
> political hot potato [several other companies have done it in plain
> sight for a generation]. But the genie is out of the bottle now.
>
> (Apologies for the profuse metaphors).
>
>>The company added that it chose to base its international
>>headquarters in Ireland as it was the "best location to hire
>>staff with the right skills to run a multilingual hi-tech operation
>>serving the whole of Europe".
>
> Which is true. Many well-known technology companies have based
> themselves in Ireland and tapped the same talent (much of it
> immigrant, not that it's a bad thing). Dell, Intel, Apple etc.
> -- 
> Roland Perry
>
>


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