No one is saying that.



It's been explained to you already.

Schemes set up purely to avoid tax are already illegal. So if the accountants or the corporations come up with schemes designed solely to avoid tax they[i are [/iacting illegally already.

The problem is lack of enforcement, not staying within the boundaries of the law and lack of enforcement has never been an excuse for behaving in illegal activities.

It seems we have got to the stage where we can no longer expect mega-corporations to behave with probity yet because they get away with it, you seem to think it is OK. Just how stupid is that?

If you knew you could dip your hand in the till of the local corner shop because the shopkeeper left the till unattended you would not do it. You would know it was illegal and equally know it would be morally wrong.

Yet when accountants and corporations behave an in analogous way over tax its the victim who is at fault not the perpetrator.

Few large companies consider all stakeholders these days. The effect it has may well be detrimental but they still do it even in the face of evidence it makes no sense. M&S is a bit of basket case but was once a company that treated its employees well. They are now moving to the zero hours model believe it or not.

The suggestion from Private Eye is also that Vodafone are not behaving legally as the scheme mentioned has one purpose, the avoidance of tax. So it is not a legitimate claim against (for example) R&D expenses or whatever that may be covered by legistlation.



There is! It's been an issue for a long time. I know people who no only pay less tax by doing this but even manage to get fees paid for their children as students due to being classed as low income families. The fact only people who are on PAYE pay their full whack of tax has never been lost on me.

What is ironic is these people are often the first to complain if the likes of the NHS are underfunded.



That is just reductio ad absurdum. If that is true then everyone and every company would aim to pay no tax at all.

I am sure you aren't daft to enough to believe this is a workable situation and however big or small a state you want that some of it must be paid for by taxation.

It is therefore obviously the case that as tax must be collected taxation must be levied and collected fairly.

We already know some companies have achieved zero tax thus transferring the tax burden further toward the individual. So the fact Vodafone wants to pay zero tax is not justified just because that is what they want to do.

The Times have revealed a few famous names who have invested in the Liberty 'tax strategy'. Great name for a tax strategy that, Liberty.

What I find odd is that such companies moan about infrastructure holding them back and that government should pay for it. I am sorry but why? If their business needs road and rail links then they should pay for it if they don't wish to pay much tax. Why is it the responsibility of Joe Public to not just buy their products and services but to pay higher taxes to help their business be more profitable? Surely if they have a demand for infrastructure they will pay for it themselves or pay a private company to build it for them? Isn't that what free market capitalism dictates? Isn't that what was done in the Victorian era when private capital built railways to mines, etc?

Interestingly, in Germany (or at least in certain parts of it) if a company wants to open a big warehouse/factory/supermarket or build a big housing estate they are generally made to build/improve the infrastructure of the surrounding area in a significant way.
It seems to help them have more of a tie or relationship to the area when they've invested in more than just the building that they actually own.

That's neo-cons for you: privatise the profit and socialise any loss (as much cost as you can get away with)

Anne Robinson, Gary Barlow, Katie Melua, all of the Arctic Monkey's, Michael Caine and George Michael.

I wonder what possesses them to do it. Even if they pay their full whack they are still going to be worth literally millions. If someone said to me we are going t pay you £2m a year but you only get to take home £1m I'd be quite happy with that thank you very much.

This is an interesting article about the super rich wanting to hang onto every last penny:

[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/08/the-age-of-entitlement-how-wealth-breeds-narcissism[/url

And here's one of the mega-rich who seems to finally "get it"

[url=http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.U76VSpRdWE4The Pitchforks are Coming[/url

Interesting point of view - pay more in wages to the low paid and create more spenders who in turn shop for the things that you build and sell - how any high street retailer who pays minimum wage doesn't see this glaringly obvious fact is beyond me, other than the excuse of shareholder short term greed.

Indeed. Especially when Henry Ford worked it out a century ago.

Which maybe begs the question as to what Ford the company might have done back then had shareholders been in charge rather than 1 person.
1 person might well think of these things compared to shareholders (many of whom are organisations rather than individuals) who don't think that far about the business.

So... The Stock Market - good or bad?

Generally stock markets are good things, when they operate within the rules and are investing in companies that either make things people want to buy or services they need or wish to avail themselves of. The problems occur when organisations or individuals operate outside the rules or money is invested in money as a means of making yet more money

Your last sentence is the main problem, too many people who believe that money makes more money all by some sort of magic rather than by having to do anything with it - the company I work for has one major investor who dictates from afar but at least he understands the industry we work in, has actually proved that he can run hands-on a similar previous company, and has a plan for us to move down, far too many would just sit back, cut costs and bleed the profit out of a business like ours.

An interesting read and I liked this quote which is the basis of his essay in many ways "These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base."

I remember mentioning that effect years ago on here and getting shot down by the usual right-wingers. When the staff at Tesco can no longer afford to shop there, then there really is a problem that they "just don't get".

I wonder what would happen if a PLC was barred from giving shareholder dividends or management bonuses if any employees were reliant on tax credits or housing benefit?

They would simply dismiss or "lever out" anyone in such a position and replace them with agency staff thus building a firewall between themselves and the legislation.

But my plan was to include any and all agency staff, directly or indirectly employed by the PLC.

As it was when we discussed the salary "multiplier" scenario

And could you seriously expect an employer like Tesco to simply outsource all labour?

Part of the scenario that has caused the huge boom in agency staffing in the past five years has been the arms-length ability of the top level employer to absolve themselves of certain liabilities, moral or legal, and legislation is very slow to wake up to the idea that (for instance) an agency warehouse worker doesn't have anything like the same rights that he/she would have if they were directly employed and even when it does wake up it tends to use "persuasion" methods to tweak things rather than legislate - Camerons "recommendation" that zero hours contracts should only be used as a last resort falling on deaf ears is one example.

In distribution and retail there are far to many low-skilled jobs that simply need a body on the ground today but not tomorrow but then again on Sunday and yes, there are far too many employers who see a body required on the ground tomorrow as simply a spreadsheet issue in exactly the same way that far too many retailers see their trading outlets as spreadsheet items rather than places of employment dependency for 300+ families, and any talk of "colleagues" is mere PR bollax and window dressing.

So yes, introduce a penalty on shareholders if your corporation directly employs in-work benefit claimants and you will see a move to even more agency workers.

If in-work benefits were scrapped then employees would gravitate to good employers and bad employers would be unable to retain staff in good economic times.

and just what do you suggest they live on in the time it takes for that to happen?

That would require it to be an employees market and when was the last time that happened in the low skilled sector?

Unless you can see a time when we have full employment what you say above will never happen. Even in the boom years of late 80's. 90's and early 2000's we never had full employment.

Whether Cod'ead's idea is workable or not I have not given much thought but I do believe the growth of zero hours contracts is an example of when the market needs to be controlled by some sort of legislation.

Same with the minimum wage and employment protection laws. Take these away or reduce them and you can guarantee there will be quick race to the bottom.

I once witnessed a small pocket of "employees market" in the Wilmslow area of Cheshire - there is close to that town a large expanse of distribution warehouses belonging to most of the major names, supermarkets (almost every one), DIY stores etc, each of them huge places which service the whole of the North West for their owners.

Approx ten years ago I was involved in setting up the payroll for one of these megalith units involving around 800 basic wage pickers, FLT and dogsbody jobs , at this time all of them directly employed with only a few dozen agency staff to take up immediate day-to-day shortages - thats how it used to be. It was noticable though that at this location, unlike the company's other huge distribution warehousing sites, the basic wage was ten or twelve pence an hour more than you'd expect it to be - for that company this was a big deal believe me but they had no choice because the local area simply did not have enough low skilled employees to satisfy the demand of so many large distribution warehouses which had been attracted to the zone by cheap or no business rates and low rents - Wilmslow is not a blue collar employment hotspot and if one company was desperate for employees one month they'd nudge up their basic rate by one penny which would draw from the other sites like a magnet, it was quite amusing to see large corporations throwing pennies per hour on the table in a bidding war for the limited staff.

Of course its changed now for its too easy to bus in employees or to simply tell them to turn up at "xxx" in the morning knowing that they will get there somehow because they need the work and if its of a long enough duration they'll relocate locally being that they don't have any roots or connections to any given area anyway.

The only bidding wars going on there now are the ones between the agencies to pick up contracts at NMW plus an overhead which keeps getting cut.

In the past it happened at company's such as Lever Bros and Cadbury to name but two. Those companies went onto be extremely successful.

I don't see how that is relevant.

There have always been the odd employer who wasn't out to exploit their staff and offer good wages. And yes these attract lots of applicants.

The trouble is there have never been enough of them so why getting rid of in-work benefits is going to give us enough good employers I don't understand unless as I said it becomes an employees market, which it isn't going to and never has been.

Also there is the issue that if you don't take the job and you are currently claiming dole then your benefits will be cut.

Yep. I'd also just add that this issue along with the argument over the minimum wage v living wage can often be discussed as just being about wages. Whereas minimum wage jobs in a lot of cases can be made a lot more attractive to people not by a wage rise but by better working conditions.
To take Jerry's example of warehousing jobs, there's a similar warehousing site in Sherburn not far away from York. The jobs are advertised at minimum wage rate but they still get more than enough applicants. But then the problems begin. You aren't working for the company who's name is on the side of the building, you're working for an agency.
Zero hours contract (or a guaranteed low hours + extras contract, the typical amount seems to be 8 hours).
Sod all terms & conditions that benefit you, but plenty that benefit the agency such as conditions that say you can be moved to another warehouse or another site entirely at a moments notice.
You have to buy your own PPE. I'm pretty sure that's against the law, or it was the last time I ran a warehouse anyway (admittedly only a small one, nowhere near the size of these).
An "interview" that consists of a mass (20-30 people at once) signing up to the agency.
Long working hours with few breaks and unpaid lunch.
Sod all holidays.
Strict time & motion practices.
Fines for breaking these practices or not working at the correct rate.
Fines for breakages or missing items.
Regular physical searches.


And then they wonder why all but the Eastern Europeans drop out at the stage where you are told/figure all that out. But my point really is that people will work, often happily, for minimum wage. What breaks the camels back is minimum wage plus frankly horrible & what I would describe as robotic & inhumane working conditions.