Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx
...I think that you've taken my comments as being aimed at you - nope!)
|
No offence seen by me Lynxy, so it was just point making on my part. For myself, I don't see you as one of the irrational noisy ones who are long on opinion and short on facts who appear in every such thread, and if I had of I would not have spent my time responding to you
.
But I would be interested in any facts behind your reasons for regarding corporates that have been mentioned as thieves. While I have seem much in the media claiming they do not pay taxes that they should have I have seen no actual evidence that is so.
All I have seen is claims along the lines of comparing their revenues to tax paid rather than profit (which is what tax is assessed against) to tax paid, and so such claims are not relevant.
Just one example as to why it is dangerous to compare tax paid with revenue, some years back I was engaged to recover a subsidiary of a holding company which while its revenues were strong as it held a majority stake in its markets it was not profitable; a consequence of that was it did not pay any tax (both the holding company and the subsidiary were in the same country and quite ordinary in structure).
My suggestion to the board was that the subsidiary remove itself from a couple of its markets that had high costs associated with them; they were not very happy with that suggestion as it meant that a significant amount of revenue would be lost, however given they had no other answers they went along with it. The result was that action (along with some others) resulted in the company's revenue dropping by a significant amount but the company became profitable and hence became a tax payer.
So it is not rational to judge from the uniformed side-lines that because a company has what appears to be strong revenues that it is making strong, or any profits. But that is what I see most of those criticising the corporates in question basing their criticisms on strong revenues so should be paying more taxes.
As I have said, if corporates understate their profits for tax purposes by overvaluing deductible costs such as intercompany transfer payments (and let's keep in mind that they may be making what they think is an honest valuation based on the law and their opinion) then the law already provides remedies. Perhaps in some countries the Revenue has not been diligent in auditing such deductions, but that is not the corporate world's fault in any way at all.