"Sharia law" proving popular in the Daily Mail today. (Check the comments)
Seriously !
Ha, the famously well informed newspaper commenters! We discussed here this morning, either someone didn't read the leaseback agreement properly or else they didn't think they'd ever need a bar there.
Cue mad outrage from the DM commenters though, especially since an early version of the article was illustrated by a pic of Farage with a pint. He's never been an MP.
"Sharia law" proving popular in the Daily Mail today. (Check the comments)
Seriously !
Yes - but only because the commentators think that the politicians being actually adversely affected by Sharia law might persuade them to look at it more seriously.
On the other hand (literally) - I gather that in Bradford they are pioneering hand transplants.
At least where they're based they won't be lacking in the raw material.
"Sharia law" proving popular in the Daily Mail today. (Check the comments)
Seriously !
Yes - but only because the commentators think that the politicians being actually adversely affected by Sharia law might persuade them to look at it more seriously.
On the other hand (literally) - I gather that in Bradford they are pioneering hand transplants.
At least where they're based they won't be lacking in the raw material.
Facebook and Google have big HQs in the UK, benefiting as a corporation from the UK's infrastructure, and stability, and benefiting via their employees from our schools, police, health system, etc, yet for some reason pay their taxes via Andorra or Neptune.
They have premises on which they pay business rates, and employees for whom they pay a 13.8% payroll tax (as well as collecting PAYE on the behalf of the taxman). Having an operation here is not the same as making taxes for corporation tax purposes here - after all, they are selling services based on Californian software running on servers wherever electricity can be bought most cheaply.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Amazon (genuinely) barely makes any money. Every penny they earn, they spend.
I could only applaud Osborne when he shut down the Channel Islands Low Value Confinement Relief.
Yes, that was never intended to be a tax dodge by otherwise UK-based mail order companies moving their whole damn distribution operation to Jersey. And it would have been worth millions in extra VAT to boot.
Facebook and Google have big HQs in the UK, benefiting as a corporation from the UK's infrastructure, and stability, and benefiting via their employees from our schools, police, health system, etc, yet for some reason pay their taxes via Andorra or Neptune.
They have premises on which they pay business rates, and employees for whom they pay a 13.8% payroll tax (as well as collecting PAYE on the behalf of the taxman). Having an operation here is not the same as making taxes for corporation tax purposes here - after all, they are selling services based on Californian software running on servers in wherever electricity can be bought most cheaply.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorrted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
Who orginally set up the Cayman Islands as a “country” where businesses could have their “HQ’s” so pay no tax on their UK or elsewhere activities?
And why don't they pay corporation tax, Mr. Urquahrt? Is it because they don't make profits, in which case one wonders how they survive year after year making a loss. Perhaps it is because they have clever lawyers and accountants gaming the system.
As for the indirect taxes nonsense, I pay out a lot in VAT and in other duties such as on petrol and alcohol (especially the last) but I still have to pay income tax. Some corporations are taking the piss and it is time HMRC put a stop to it.
I'm sympathetic to the point about indirect taxes. It's nice that Britain benefits e.g. income tax and NI paid by a company with an office here, but that isn't some kind of exemption from paying any other taxes that are due.
With respect to profits, though, you're being naive if you believe that there is tens of billions in revenue just sitting there waiting for the HMRC to collect if only it chased corporations "properly" (for what a lot of the people angry at corporations not paying the "right taxes" are hoping to achieve, you'd need to completely reshape the law at an international level), or that what's happening is mostly due to clever corporations doing sneaky things with their ingenious lawyers and accountants (it's true there are Double Irishes with Dutch sandwiches, but that really only accounts for a tiny part of the issue).
For a fair comparison with multinational corporations at the first instance you've got to look at the profit they make globally, and then compare it to the tax they pay globally. Of course on that basis, Facebook pays more than a few grand in tax per year. Some corporations make hefty losses (or are carrying losses forward) and really do pay zilch. Others operate on low margins and pay a "disappointing" amount of corporation tax on that basis. The more complex issue is whether corporation tax is being paid in the "right" place, and that's a fiddly one, because it's a bugger to work out where profit is really being generated.
"Sharia law" proving popular in the Daily Mail today. (Check the comments)
Seriously !
Yes - but only because the commentators think that the politicians being actually adversely affected by Sharia law might persuade them to look at it more seriously.
On the other hand (literally) - I gather that in Bradford they are pioneering hand transplants.
At least where they're based they won't be lacking in the raw material.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Google's EU HQ is in Dublin. It's a proper HQ not just an office on paper, and they pay all Irish tax due on their European operations at the prevailing Irish 12.5% rate.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
I guess "1966 Landmark legislation is introduced to encourage banking industry" is more relevant than "1969 Cayman Drama Society, an amateur group, is formed."
@tnewtondunn: Breaking: Cameron brands the Juncker emergency brake plan "not good enough". Brinkmanship for a February deal goes up to DEFCON2.
From August....I suppose Nov 13 meant we cant be rowing w France... Juncker stands in for Hollande
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
@tnewtondunn: Breaking: Cameron brands the Juncker emergency brake plan "not good enough". Brinkmanship for a February deal goes up to DEFCON2.
From August....I suppose Nov 13 meant we cant be rowing w France... Juncker stands in for Hollande
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
I think the fundamental problem with corporation tax is the determination of how much e.g. Google's workers in the UK “generate profit”. They aren’t really working on a discrete business unit that we can say is generating $X revenue (then we can subtract $Y of costs for this British unit and say Britain makes $Z of profit for Google). Google UK's operations do not stand alone, not least because the technology is essentially from outside. Ignoring the more controversial issue of Google's "marketing support" people in the UK (which does call into question the way they invoice ad sales to Ireland*), they employ a lot of programmers here. If they are just working on Google’s general codebase how could anybody – including Google management – know exactly how much revenue particular lines of code are making?
It is easyish to establish where a company’s costs are happening (transfer pricing being the trickiest part from what I can gather) but for a complex product system like Google it is far harder to attribute revenue to those costs to allow you to construct a sensible “profit generated” for each cost centre.
I think what people hate about the Google situation is that they can see Britain earns Google $A in revenue (even if it gets booked as sales in Ireland) while Google spends $B here, so Google nets out a profit of $C from Britain. But those figures A and B have really got very very little to do with each other.
Moreover we would be severely ticked off if a major British-based exporter ran with the argument “our revenue from Britain is a mere $A, since most of our sales are exports and should morally count as revenue in the country of destination. Since we export so much of our produce, highly successfully, then $A is far lower than our production costs in Britain of $B, so Britain is a net negative $C for us and we would like to skip the corporation tax this year thanks”.
Which is why we don’t structure things that way. And there's definitely a "can't have things two ways" problem here if we wanted (and "we" is going to mean international effort) to rewrite the laws
* Google's claim, as I understand it, is that the sales-related bits in London are basically back-office operations and the actual sales are finalised at their - admittedly much larger and higher-staffed, not just a nameplate - offices in Ireland. But this strikes me as something where there is surely an element of subjectivity. Perhaps campaigners could reasonably hope to push/shame Google into invoicing a certain % of sales to London not Dublin. Certainly if we applied a philosophical "sine qua non" approach, there must be a certain proportion of sales which take place only because of the help from the London office, even if we can't pin down which ones exactly, and even if the deal is technically sealed in Ireland.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Google's EU HQ is in Dublin. It's a proper HQ not just an office on paper, and they pay all Irish tax due on their European operations at the prevailing Irish 12.5% rate.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
Birmingham - I used to have a flat in Symphony Court, just off Broad Street. The only problem I can recall was classical music rowdies talking loudly under my window. Perhaps it is just one of those smears you are allowed to make against the English, to somehow counterbalance actual facts from Cologne.
Facebook and Google have big HQs in the UK, benefiting as a corporation from the UK's infrastructure, and stability, and benefiting via their employees from our schools, police, health system, etc, yet for some reason pay their taxes via Andorra or Neptune.
They have premises on which they pay business rates, and employees for whom they pay a 13.8% payroll tax (as well as collecting PAYE on the behalf of the taxman). Having an operation here is not the same as making taxes for corporation tax purposes here - after all, they are selling services based on Californian software running on servers wherever electricity can be bought most cheaply.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
Very much agree with this. It's a problem governments need to solve.
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
From the other side of the fence, Mr R, I agree. I think this whole renegotiation business is a sham, cooked partly to keep the likes of Liam Fox under control and partly to divert attention from Osborne’s asset-stripping.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
I would rather forget about Ubi Soft :-)
I used to date the Investor Relations girl at Ubi Soft. (About 15 years ago.)
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
Rubbish. The government has not openly admitted it at all. A former Minister who has fallen out with Cameron is hardly a reliable source.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
I think it's Activision now, though I don't know what makes Ubisoft independent and EA not.
Our lack of software companies is down to small thinking UK management and short termist shareholders.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
The UK has also had in the past 10-15 some other companies that have been extremely important on the back end side of things e.g. Zeus. The early days of mass market internet wouldn't have functioned without Zeus technology.
But my mother was complaining this weekend that she doesn't know which way to vote & she hates being a floating voter
She was leave, but someone then convinced her based on the Norwegian "fax democracy" argument - I corrected her on that (@RichardTyndall, you'd better not have been telling porkies!) And now she is leaning that way again
Was also approached, interestingly enough, by a younger son of old family that is still seriously influential in their part of the country. They are actively looking to work for "leave" which was somewhat unexpected, as the individual is delightful but utterly metropolitan in outlook*
(* although he did tell me that the last time he met Cameron, the PM had a fat cigar in his mouth and a shotgun on his arm...)
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
I think it's Activision now, though I don't know what makes Ubisoft independent and EA not.
Our lack of software companies is down to small thinking UK management and short termist shareholders.
IIRC, Activision is the biggest independent video game company in the world, EA is number two. In years when there is a new Grand Theft Auto, then Take Two gets number three, but in other years it's Ubisoft.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
The UK has also had in the past 10-15 some other companies that have been extremely important on the back end side of things e.g. Zeus. The early days of mass market internet wouldn't have functioned without Zeus technology.
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
From the other side of the fence, Mr R, I agree. I think this whole renegotiation business is a sham, cooked partly to keep the likes of Liam Fox under control and partly to divert attention from Osborne’s asset-stripping.
Both sides seem absolutely determined to hand this referendum to their opponents!
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
I think it's Activision now, though I don't know what makes Ubisoft independent and EA not.
Our lack of software companies is down to small thinking UK management and short termist shareholders.
IIRC, Activision is the biggest independent video game company in the world, EA is number two. In years when there is a new Grand Theft Auto, then Take Two gets number three, but in other years it's Ubisoft.
That'll teach me for not reading. Didn't see the "third".
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Google's EU HQ is in Dublin. It's a proper HQ not just an office on paper, and they pay all Irish tax due on their European operations at the prevailing Irish 12.5% rate.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
They pay all tax due on their Irish operations, not on their European operations. That's Why multi-nationals setup in Ireland - so they can be part of the EU common market but not pay tax on the non-Irish European parts. This should be ending in 2020.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
The UK has also had in the past 10-15 some other companies that have been extremely important on the back end side of things e.g. Zeus. The early days of mass market internet wouldn't have functioned without Zeus technology.
Also, DON'T FORGET ARM
Yes, that tiny chip company that isn't important at all :-)
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
Rubbish. The government has not openly admitted it at all. A former Minister who has fallen out with Cameron is hardly a reliable source.
Kippers are a paranoid bunch!
The best way to fool the electorate is to stand up in public and announce to the public they are going to fool them. Only a fool would believe that.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Google's EU HQ is in Dublin. It's a proper HQ not just an office on paper, and they pay all Irish tax due on their European operations at the prevailing Irish 12.5% rate.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
They pay all tax due on their Irish operations, not on their European operations. That's Why multi-nationals setup in Ireland - so they can be part of the EU common market but not pay tax on the non-Irish European parts. This should be ending in 2020.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Google's EU HQ is in Dublin. It's a proper HQ not just an office on paper, and they pay all Irish tax due on their European operations at the prevailing Irish 12.5% rate.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
They pay all tax due on their Irish operations, not on their European operations. That's Why multi-nationals setup in Ireland - so they can be part of the EU common market but not pay tax on the non-Irish European parts. This should be ending in 2020.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
The UK has also had in the past 10-15 some other companies that have been extremely important on the back end side of things e.g. Zeus. The early days of mass market internet wouldn't have functioned without Zeus technology.
Also, DON'T FORGET ARM
Ah yes, that small company, how could we forget. Only 12 billion chips in 2014.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
There's Frontier in Cambridge, run by my friend David Braben.
Codemasters, Eidos, DNA Design (now Rockstar) are all subsidiaries of larger companies.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Same here. The Norwegian approach of publishing all tax returns online might be the simplest approach - the Government doesn't need to shame anyone itself, but the media will notice if Famous Rock Star X and Huge Company Y are paying tuppence, and it would probably produce some useful leads for HMRC.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
SCEE is still in London. Probably the most important developer for the current generation. Rock star North, makers of GTA, are based in Edinburgh.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Google's EU HQ is in Dublin. It's a proper HQ not just an office on paper, and they pay all Irish tax due on their European operations at the prevailing Irish 12.5% rate.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
They pay all tax due on their Irish operations, not on their European operations. That's Why multi-nationals setup in Ireland - so they can be part of the EU common market but not pay tax on the non-Irish European parts. This should be ending in 2020.
But the Irish operations include most of their invoices to British companies. They are trying to maximise the revenues going through Ireland rather than through Britain (and other EU countries) because they attract less tax in Ireland.
As others have said they way forward is to work on international agreements, but this is very dry and boring when you could just write GOOGLE BAD!!! in 60-point letters on page 1 of a newspaper instead.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
SCEE is still in London. Probably the most important developer for the current generation. Rock star North, makers of GTA, are based in Edinburgh.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
There's probably nowhere on earth with a better programmer : revenue ratio than Rockstar North. GTA V must have made a billion dollars in revenues off a few hundred people.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
There's Frontier in Cambridge, run by my friend David Braben.
Codemasters, Eidos, DNA Design (now Rockstar) are all subsidiaries of larger companies.
Loved the original Elite and Elite Frontier games and were worldwide hits...Elite Dangerous not doing so well. Although, not pissing $100's millions up the wall like Star Citizen lot (by lot I mean Chris Roberts...do we call him British?, he grew up here.)
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Same here. The Norwegian approach of publishing all tax returns online might be the simplest approach - the Government doesn't need to shame anyone itself, but the media will notice if Famous Rock Star X and Huge Company Y are paying tuppence, and it would probably produce some useful leads for HMRC.
HMRC should be checking tax returns themselves, not copping out by publishing them and expecting others to pick up their slack.
You'd think with advances in IT that this kind of thing would be easier and cheaper. What are they doing with the £billions the department is paid at the moment?
And why don't they pay corporation tax, Mr. Urquahrt? Is it because they don't make profits, in which case one wonders how they survive year after year making a loss. Perhaps it is because they have clever lawyers and accountants gaming the system.
As for the indirect taxes nonsense, I pay out a lot in VAT and in other duties such as on petrol and alcohol (especially the last) but I still have to pay income tax. Some corporations are taking the piss and it is time HMRC put a stop to it.
I'm sympathetic to the point about indirect taxes. It's nice that Britain benefits e.g. income tax and NI paid by a company with an office here, but that isn't some kind of exemption from paying any other taxes that are due.
With respect to profits, though, you're being naive if you believe that there is tens of billions in revenue just sitting there waiting for the HMRC to collect if only it chased corporations "properly" (for what a lot of the people angry at corporations not paying the "right taxes" are hoping to achieve, you'd need to completely reshape the law at an international level), or that what's happening is mostly due to clever corporations doing sneaky things with their ingenious lawyers and accountants (it's true there are Double Irishes with Dutch sandwiches, but that really only accounts for a tiny part of the issue).
For a fair comparison with multinational corporations at the first instance you've got to look at the profit they make globally, and then compare it to the tax they pay globally. Of course on that basis, Facebook pays more than a few grand in tax per year. Some corporations make hefty losses (or are carrying losses forward) and really do pay zilch. Others operate on low margins and pay a "disappointing" amount of corporation tax on that basis. The more complex issue is whether corporation tax is being paid in the "right" place, and that's a fiddly one, because it's a bugger to work out where profit is really being generated.
I am fully with you on all that, Mr. Ears. Nevertheless, companies doing business in the UK take advantage of UK infrastructure, from roads to legal services to the rule of law itself and all that has to be paid for. Companies that are making sales in the UK are generating profit in the UK, a profit which is only possible because of the infrastructure that they use. Furthermore the companies will know precisely in which countries they have made a profit and how much that profit was. Therefore what we are left with is companies arranging their affairs, completely legally, to avoid paying tax.
I merely suggest that the situation is now reaching the point where the public will not continue to put up with it. Something will change.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
SCEE is still in London. Probably the most important developer for the current generation. Rock star North, makers of GTA, are based in Edinburgh.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
There's probably nowhere on earth with a better programmer : revenue ratio than Rockstar North. GTA V must have made a billion dollars in revenues off a few hundred people.
More than that I think. The latest figure I saw was 54m units shipped, at a $25 ASP that's about $1.5bn, crazy.
What I find dispiriting about the Google tax row is that we worry about this and not the fact that we don't have 1st division software companies in Europe. (SAP is the closest we come, I think.)
SAP is a division one software company. By market capitalisation, it is the third largest software company in the world, only behind Microsoft and (just) Oracle. Pretty much every large company in the world runs their entire business on SAP systems.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
The UK has also had in the past 10-15 some other companies that have been extremely important on the back end side of things e.g. Zeus. The early days of mass market internet wouldn't have functioned without Zeus technology.
Also, DON'T FORGET ARM
Ah yes, that small company, how could we forget. Only 12 billion chips in 2014.
I don't forget ARM. I nearly included them as almost-candidate along with SAP. I didn't because of their scale - billions of chips are made to their designs but their revenue is quite small.
Obviously this all depends on what one means by 1st division. To me it means a business with giant, industry-bestriding scale but also one that is historically significant, such that one can speak of the "XXX era".
IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook are or were such companies. Imo SAP and ARM are not.
Two migrants placed in a German children's home after claiming to be 15 and 17 are arrested for 'sexually assaulting 12-year-old girl and threatening to kill witness aged SIX'
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
SCEE is still in London. Probably the most important developer for the current generation. Rock star North, makers of GTA, are based in Edinburgh.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
There's probably nowhere on earth with a better programmer : revenue ratio than Rockstar North. GTA V must have made a billion dollars in revenues off a few hundred people.
More than that I think. The latest figure I saw was 54m units shipped, at a $25 ASP that's about $1.5bn, crazy.
Obviously this all depends on what one means by 1st division. To me it means a business with giant, industry-bestriding scale but also one that is historically significant, such that one can speak of the "XXX era".
IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook are or were such companies. Imo SAP and ARM are not.
Oh, ARM certainly is. ARM is much more significant than SAP, which is just yet another supplier of boring commercial software systems, albeit a very successful one.
ARM, on the other hand, virtually invented the low-power-consumption CPU market, which makes smartphones possible.
Two migrants placed in a German children's home after claiming to be 15 and 17 are arrested for 'sexually assaulting 12-year-old girl and threatening to kill witness aged SIX'
Facebook and Google have big HQs in the UK, benefiting as a corporation from the UK's infrastructure, and stability, and benefiting via their employees from our schools, police, health system, etc, yet for some reason pay their taxes via Andorra or Neptune.
They have premises on which they pay business rates, and employees for whom they pay a 13.8% payroll tax (as well as collecting PAYE on the behalf of the taxman). Having an operation here is not the same as making taxes for corporation tax purposes here - after all, they are selling services based on Californian software running on servers wherever electricity can be bought most cheaply.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
Very much agree with this. It's a problem governments need to solve.
The Daily Mail has made much of a meal about Google's taxes. It had a headline that a minister "promised" special treatment for big US companies. At the end of the article it quoted the ministers words which were entirely contrary to the DM headline.
Of course, the popular press sells papers by pandering to its readers' prejudices, feeding their paranoia and predicting apocalyptic events on a daily basis.
Facebook and Google have big HQs in the UK, benefiting as a corporation from the UK's infrastructure, and stability, and benefiting via their employees from our schools, police, health system, etc, yet for some reason pay their taxes via Andorra or Neptune.
They have premises on which they pay business rates, and employees for whom they pay a 13.8% payroll tax (as well as collecting PAYE on the behalf of the taxman). Having an operation here is not the same as making taxes for corporation tax purposes here - after all, they are selling services based on Californian software running on servers wherever electricity can be bought most cheaply.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
Very much agree with this. It's a problem governments need to solve.
The Daily Mail has made much of a meal about Google's taxes. It had a headline that a minister "promised" special treatment for big US companies. At the end of the article it quoted the ministers words which were entirely contrary to the DM headline.
Of course, the popular press sells papers by pandering to its readers' prejudices, feeding their paranoia and predicting apocalyptic events on a daily basis.
Is this the same Daily Mail who's controlling shareholder has non-domicile tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts which entail him paying almost no UK tax on his income, investments or wealth?
Perhaps it's time they considered running a campaign to get Jonathan Harmsworth to pay more tax too.
Two migrants placed in a German children's home after claiming to be 15 and 17 are arrested for 'sexually assaulting 12-year-old girl and threatening to kill witness aged SIX'
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
SCEE is still in London. Probably the most important developer for the current generation. Rock star North, makers of GTA, are based in Edinburgh.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
There's probably nowhere on earth with a better programmer : revenue ratio than Rockstar North. GTA V must have made a billion dollars in revenues off a few hundred people.
More than that I think. The latest figure I saw was 54m units shipped, at a $25 ASP that's about $1.5bn, crazy.
And that ASP could be low...
That's about right for a third party published game that hasn't seen heavy discounting. The overall ASP will be closer $50 but from that the platform holder will have their cut, the retailer will take a cut as will the distributor. If you want to know the exact figure email me and I can break it down. I have first hand experience in the industry.
Just thinking about the UK and software, we have Sage in Newcastle - although (frankly) they're getting their arses kicked by Xero and Intuit right now.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
How many games companies in the UK these days? Although many are now simply studios of the big boys, with the likes of Lionhead, Rare etc having being bought up.
SCEE is still in London. Probably the most important developer for the current generation. Rock star North, makers of GTA, are based in Edinburgh.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
There's probably nowhere on earth with a better programmer : revenue ratio than Rockstar North. GTA V must have made a billion dollars in revenues off a few hundred people.
More than that I think. The latest figure I saw was 54m units shipped, at a $25 ASP that's about $1.5bn, crazy.
And that ASP could be low...
That's about right for a third party published game that hasn't seen heavy discounting. The overall ASP will be closer $50 but from that the platform holder will have their cut, the retailer will take a cut as will the distributor. If you want to know the exact figure email me and I can break it down. I have first hand experience in the industry.
Obviously this all depends on what one means by 1st division. To me it means a business with giant, industry-bestriding scale but also one that is historically significant, such that one can speak of the "XXX era".
IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook are or were such companies. Imo SAP and ARM are not.
Oh, ARM certainly is. ARM is much more significant than SAP, which is just yet another supplier of boring commercial software systems, albeit a very successful one.
ARM, on the other hand, virtually invented the low-power-consumption CPU market, which makes smartphones possible.
That is my objection to SAP in a nutshell (but I dislike SAP and may be letting that influence me).
Yes, ARM passes the historical significance test and I guess one can say it has scale in terms of the epic number of processors based on its designs. Obviously its revenue is tiny in relative terms but perhaps that doesn't signify.
Obviously this all depends on what one means by 1st division. To me it means a business with giant, industry-bestriding scale but also one that is historically significant, such that one can speak of the "XXX era".
IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook are or were such companies. Imo SAP and ARM are not.
Oh, ARM certainly is. ARM is much more significant than SAP, which is just yet another supplier of boring commercial software systems, albeit a very successful one.
ARM, on the other hand, virtually invented the low-power-consumption CPU market, which makes smartphones possible.
That is my objection to SAP in a nutshell (but I dislike SAP and may be letting that influence me).
Is it that "Company X" runs SAP, or that SAP runs "Company X"?
That is my objection to SAP in a nutshell (but I dislike SAP and may be letting that influence me).
Yes, ARM passes the historical significance test and I guess one can say it has scale in terms of the epic number of processors based on its designs. Obviously its revenue is tiny in relative terms but perhaps that doesn't signify.
I think the fact that a large proportion of all the people on this earth use an ARM-based device makes the company pretty large scale!
That is my objection to SAP in a nutshell (but I dislike SAP and may be letting that influence me).
Yes, ARM passes the historical significance test and I guess one can say it has scale in terms of the epic number of processors based on its designs. Obviously its revenue is tiny in relative terms but perhaps that doesn't signify.
I think the fact that a large proportion of all the people on this earth use an ARM-based device makes the company pretty large scale!
Well certainly one could say that we are living in the ARM era (though tactless in the presence of someone who worked for Intel).
Interesting that he thinks a higher turnout will help Leave, whereas the consensus on here is that a higher turnout will help Remain.
How it plays in Scotland could be particularly interesting, could it be that the SNP subtly change tactics and encourage a Leave vote in pursuit of Indyref II?
Jim Sillars the former deputy SNP leader and Glasgow Govan MP already backs leave and wants Scotland out of the UK and EU
Jim will just say/vote anything the opposite of the SNP. He spat his dummy out long ago and cannot get over his petted lip.
How many Hispanic actors get nominations? I'm totally struggling here bar long-dead Raul Julia
Not sure Hispanic is a good example as it's not a real thing.
Today, organizations in the United States use the term as a broad catchall to refer to persons with a historical and cultural relationship with Spain, regardless of race and ethnicity.[4][5] The U.S. Census Bureau defines the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race"[34] and states that Hispanics or Latinos can be of any race, any ancestry, any ethnicity.[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic#Definitions_in_the_United_States
That was really my point. Hispanic is not a racial identifier and as such is pretty meaningless when (regularly) used as one.
To my mind, I'm not surprised that America choose to invent the term. It seems to have been developed as a way of saying "not white enough".
The term Hispanic is Spanish: hispano and broadly refers to the peoples, nations, and cultures that have a historical link to Spain. The term is older than America.
Where does that leave Brazilians?
Um, Portugal (and by extension her colonies) was part of Spain/Spanish Empire from 1580 to 1640.
And in Lisbon there is a whacking great statue of the Marquis de Pombal, think Nelson's column, the man who the Portuguese credit with rescuing them from Spanish slavery. It would be a mistake, Cap'n Doc, to think that the Portuguese and Spanish do not have "issues".
I think 'Hispanic' is as real a grouping as 'Scottish'.
It's a fucking disgrace, is what it is. And yes, I feel the reckoning is coming, at last.
BTW you don't have to earn international thriller writer salaries to pay more tax than Facebook. A NURSE pays more tax, on average, than Facebook Inc.
GRRR, GRRR and thrice GRRR
Much that I think a number of companies have been taking the proverbial ...that isn't true and is another thing that really annoys me when reporting on these issues....All these companies pay a fortune in things like employers NI contributions "tax". What they don't pay a lot of is corporation tax.
no matter how you polish it , that turd won't shine
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
Rubbish. The government has not openly admitted it at all. A former Minister who has fallen out with Cameron is hardly a reliable source.
Kippers are a paranoid bunch!
I always thought Lansley favoured Remain.
I don't think it's any secret that there'll be lots of You Grunt, I'll Groan (as Alistair Meeks puts it) in the run up to the Summit.
That is my objection to SAP in a nutshell (but I dislike SAP and may be letting that influence me).
Yes, ARM passes the historical significance test and I guess one can say it has scale in terms of the epic number of processors based on its designs. Obviously its revenue is tiny in relative terms but perhaps that doesn't signify.
I think the fact that a large proportion of all the people on this earth use an ARM-based device makes the company pretty large scale!
Well certainly one could say that we are living in the ARM era (though tactless in the presence of someone who worked for Intel).
The more polite of the comments under the article suggest that maybe the Rhodes Scholarship trustees should find better ways to spend their funds than on this egotistical troublemaker.
He's not getting a very favourable response is he?
He's deluded
He's doing a great job at salting the earth, and making things harder, rather than easier for students from 'excluded' backgrounds to be admitted to Oxford.
#Rhodesmustfall does raise a question which British people haven't had to battle with but many other nations have had to think about a lot - when is history not past?
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
Interesting that he thinks a higher turnout will help Leave, whereas the consensus on here is that a higher turnout will help Remain.
How it plays in Scotland could be particularly interesting, could it be that the SNP subtly change tactics and encourage a Leave vote in pursuit of Indyref II?
Jim Sillars the former deputy SNP leader and Glasgow Govan MP already backs leave and wants Scotland out of the UK and EU
Jim will just say/vote anything the opposite of the SNP. He spat his dummy out long ago and cannot get over his petted lip.
Well he campaigned for Yes alongside them, he is just more consistent, there is no point giving up control by Westminster while accepting control from Brussels!
#Rhodesmustfall does raise a question which British people haven't had to battle with but many other nations have had to think about a lot - when is history not past?
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
Mr Meeks, don't be such a drip. It’s very simple, a foreign student visiting Britain orders a statue to be removed because he doesn’t like it. The polite answer from the start should have been wind your neck in sonny.
#Rhodesmustfall does raise a question which British people haven't had to battle with but many other nations have had to think about a lot - when is history not past?
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
How would taking down the statue change anything though? Would it allow these chumps to go back in time and shoot Rhodes or change history?
Only fools surround themselves those that only ever agree with their opinions. Education is about being challenged and having debates.
I'm no fan of Rhodes, I think he was probably a white supremacist, but given the era that's not exactly some kind of massive revelation, most colonialists from Britain were of the same opinion, Rhodes was just more successful than most.
Woodhouse College, where I did my A-Levels, famously has a tree planted there that was indirectly gifted by the Third Reich. This is in Finchley where there are a very large number of Jewish students, yet the college has kept it and the students all knew it as the "Hitler Tree". They haven't removed the tree and hopefully they won't.
My point is that no one can change history, as hard as we try or might want to, it is fixed, by trying to airbrush those bits out that people are offended to create "safe spaces" for weak minded fools we do no favours to our children.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Same here. The Norwegian approach of publishing all tax returns online might be the simplest approach - the Government doesn't need to shame anyone itself, but the media will notice if Famous Rock Star X and Huge Company Y are paying tuppence, and it would probably produce some useful leads for HMRC.
HMRC claims that they cannot discuss Google's tax affairs in public. So how did we know they are paying £130m in back taxes ? Isn't that a breach of taxpayer confidentiality.
#Rhodesmustfall does raise a question which British people haven't had to battle with but many other nations have had to think about a lot - when is history not past?
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
But I would consider it very bad manners if a Pole went to study in Russia, funded by a Russian scholarship, and then demanded the removal of a statue dedicated to a Soviet functionary.
Facebook and Google have big HQs in the UK, benefiting as a corporation from the UK's infrastructure, and stability, and benefiting via their employees from our schools, police, health system, etc, yet for some reason pay their taxes via Andorra or Neptune.
They have premises on which they pay business rates, and employees for whom they pay a 13.8% payroll tax (as well as collecting PAYE on the behalf of the taxman). Having an operation here is not the same as making taxes for corporation tax purposes here - after all, they are selling services based on Californian software running on servers wherever electricity can be bought most cheaply.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
Very much agree with this. It's a problem governments need to solve.
The Daily Mail has made much of a meal about Google's taxes. It had a headline that a minister "promised" special treatment for big US companies. At the end of the article it quoted the ministers words which were entirely contrary to the DM headline.
Of course, the popular press sells papers by pandering to its readers' prejudices, feeding their paranoia and predicting apocalyptic events on a daily basis.
Is this the same Daily Mail who's controlling shareholder has non-domicile tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts which entail him paying almost no UK tax on his income, investments or wealth?
Perhaps it's time they considered running a campaign to get Jonathan Harmsworth to pay more tax too.
I'm grateful for you pointing that out. The notion that newspapers are in the least bit objective is of course risible. In the very first instance they have every desire and self interest to do down any government and indeed any party because they wish to remain above the law themselves and feel free to smear all and sundry without any fear of retribution. The tabloidisation of the broadsheets is an ongoing disgrace and the removal of anything even closely approximating to journalism from their pages is a self evident shameful disaster. And then there is the Daily Mail...
Interesting that he thinks a higher turnout will help Leave, whereas the consensus on here is that a higher turnout will help Remain.
How it plays in Scotland could be particularly interesting, could it be that the SNP subtly change tactics and encourage a Leave vote in pursuit of Indyref II?
Jim Sillars the former deputy SNP leader and Glasgow Govan MP already backs leave and wants Scotland out of the UK and EU
Jim will just say/vote anything the opposite of the SNP. He spat his dummy out long ago and cannot get over his petted lip.
Well he campaigned for Yes alongside them, he is just more consistent, there is no point giving up control by Westminster while accepting control from Brussels!
Yeah, control from Westminster & Brussels are just the same.
#Rhodesmustfall does raise a question which British people haven't had to battle with but many other nations have had to think about a lot - when is history not past?
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
How would taking down the statue change anything though? Would it allow these chumps to go back in time and shoot Rhodes or change history?
Only fools surround themselves those that only ever agree with their opinions. Education is about being challenged and having debates.
I'm no fan of Rhodes, I think he was probably a white supremacist, but given the era that's not exactly some kind of massive revelation, most colonialists from Britain were of the same opinion, Rhodes was just more successful than most.
Woodhouse College, where I did my A-Levels, famously has a tree planted there that was indirectly gifted by the Third Reich. This is in Finchley where there are a very large number of Jewish students, yet the college has kept it and the students all knew it as the "Hitler Tree". They haven't removed the tree and hopefully they won't.
My point is that no one can change history, as hard as we try or might want to, it is fixed, by trying to airbrush those bits out that people are offended to create "safe spaces" for weak minded fools we do no favours to our children.
Rhodes wasn't a white supremacist by the standards of his times. Most people in Europe shared his views on race.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Same here. The Norwegian approach of publishing all tax returns online might be the simplest approach - the Government doesn't need to shame anyone itself, but the media will notice if Famous Rock Star X and Huge Company Y are paying tuppence, and it would probably produce some useful leads for HMRC.
HMRC claims that they cannot discuss Google's tax affairs in public. So how did we know they are paying £130m in back taxes ? Isn't that a breach of taxpayer confidentiality.
HMRC never answers questions from journalists about someone's tax affairs, they will always refer them to a minister. In this case it seems Google released a statement, I assume to the stock market as they are a listed company. http://betanews.com/2016/01/23/google-agrees-to-pay-130m-back-tax-in-the-uk/ is the earliest version of the story I can quickly find, from last Friday.
Interesting that he thinks a higher turnout will help Leave, whereas the consensus on here is that a higher turnout will help Remain.
How it plays in Scotland could be particularly interesting, could it be that the SNP subtly change tactics and encourage a Leave vote in pursuit of Indyref II?
Jim Sillars the former deputy SNP leader and Glasgow Govan MP already backs leave and wants Scotland out of the UK and EU
Jim will just say/vote anything the opposite of the SNP. He spat his dummy out long ago and cannot get over his petted lip.
Well he campaigned for Yes alongside them, he is just more consistent, there is no point giving up control by Westminster while accepting control from Brussels!
Yeah, control from Westminster & Brussels are just the same.
Well it will be if Scotland form part of an ever closer fiscal monetary and political Union with open borders and one flag.
Why not do both? Tighten up the law, but if it proves impossible to get these chisellers to cough up a decent sum, legally, then, yes a good shaming might do it.
As long as you're happy to be treated in the same way...
I have just had my accountant's email, detailing my returns. I will be paying roughly 40% of my income to HMRC next week. I claim my justifiable expenses, and no more. I don't evade or avoid tax.
Unlike Facebook, Google, amazon, etc
Same here. The Norwegian approach of publishing all tax returns online might be the simplest approach - the Government doesn't need to shame anyone itself, but the media will notice if Famous Rock Star X and Huge Company Y are paying tuppence, and it would probably produce some useful leads for HMRC.
HMRC claims that they cannot discuss Google's tax affairs in public. So how did we know they are paying £130m in back taxes ? Isn't that a breach of taxpayer confidentiality.
'Tax affairs' are not the same as the publication of taxes paid. Companies publish the taxes they pay - how else do shareholders know.
Interesting that he thinks a higher turnout will help Leave, whereas the consensus on here is that a higher turnout will help Remain.
How it plays in Scotland could be particularly interesting, could it be that the SNP subtly change tactics and encourage a Leave vote in pursuit of Indyref II?
Jim Sillars the former deputy SNP leader and Glasgow Govan MP already backs leave and wants Scotland out of the UK and EU
Jim will just say/vote anything the opposite of the SNP. He spat his dummy out long ago and cannot get over his petted lip.
Well he campaigned for Yes alongside them, he is just more consistent, there is no point giving up control by Westminster while accepting control from Brussels!
Yeah, control from Westminster & Brussels are just the same.
No, you will likely end up shackled to the Eurozone instead
#Rhodesmustfall does raise a question which British people haven't had to battle with but many other nations have had to think about a lot - when is history not past?
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
How would taking down the statue change anything though? Would it allow these chumps to go back in time and shoot Rhodes or change history?
Only fools surround themselves those that only ever agree with their opinions. Education is about being challenged and having debates.
I'm no fan of Rhodes, I think he was probably a white supremacist, but given the era that's not exactly some kind of massive revelation, most colonialists from Britain were of the same opinion, Rhodes was just more successful than most.
Woodhouse College, where I did my A-Levels, famously has a tree planted there that was indirectly gifted by the Third Reich. This is in Finchley where there are a very large number of Jewish students, yet the college has kept it and the students all knew it as the "Hitler Tree". They haven't removed the tree and hopefully they won't.
My point is that no one can change history, as hard as we try or might want to, it is fixed, by trying to airbrush those bits out that people are offended to create "safe spaces" for weak minded fools we do no favours to our children.
Rhodes wasn't a white supremacist by the standards of his times. Most people in Europe shared his views on race.
I think Rhodes was a racist, but so what? Great men are rarely good men.
Comments
Cue mad outrage from the DM commenters though, especially since an early version of the article was illustrated by a pic of Farage with a pint. He's never been an MP.
On the other hand (literally) - I gather that in Bradford they are pioneering hand transplants.
At least where they're based they won't be lacking in the raw material.
Look, as I said, everyone agrees that the international taxation regime needs to be updated. But it's not a conspiracy, it's a complex problem involving lots of different countries. And it needs to be sorted by getting the law right, not by HMRC deciding some arbitrary sum without legal justification.
With respect to profits, though, you're being naive if you believe that there is tens of billions in revenue just sitting there waiting for the HMRC to collect if only it chased corporations "properly" (for what a lot of the people angry at corporations not paying the "right taxes" are hoping to achieve, you'd need to completely reshape the law at an international level), or that what's happening is mostly due to clever corporations doing sneaky things with their ingenious lawyers and accountants (it's true there are Double Irishes with Dutch sandwiches, but that really only accounts for a tiny part of the issue).
For a fair comparison with multinational corporations at the first instance you've got to look at the profit they make globally, and then compare it to the tax they pay globally. Of course on that basis, Facebook pays more than a few grand in tax per year. Some corporations make hefty losses (or are carrying losses forward) and really do pay zilch. Others operate on low margins and pay a "disappointing" amount of corporation tax on that basis. The more complex issue is whether corporation tax is being paid in the "right" place, and that's a fiddly one, because it's a bugger to work out where profit is really being generated.
This is actually how the EU free trade is supposed to work. That we got them to pay £130m extra was well done by HMRC rather than some cozy deal - Google will offset it against Irish tax so it won't make the slightest difference to their P&L
https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/dublin/
http://www.gov.ky/portal/page/portal/cighome/cayman/islands/significantdates
I guess "1966 Landmark legislation is introduced to encourage banking industry" is more relevant than "1969 Cayman Drama Society, an amateur group, is formed."
Search Youtube for "Team America World Police Sex"
"David Cameron will orchestrate a ‘bang the table’ row with the French to try to convince voters he has secured a good deal from Brussels, senior Tories have admitted.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3200330/Cameron-stage-bang-table-row-Brussels-Plot-fool-voters-thinking-secured-good-deal.html
It is easyish to establish where a company’s costs are happening (transfer pricing being the trickiest part from what I can gather) but for a complex product system like Google it is far harder to attribute revenue to those costs to allow you to construct a sensible “profit generated” for each cost centre.
I think what people hate about the Google situation is that they can see Britain earns Google $A in revenue (even if it gets booked as sales in Ireland) while Google spends $B here, so Google nets out a profit of $C from Britain. But those figures A and B have really got very very little to do with each other.
Moreover we would be severely ticked off if a major British-based exporter ran with the argument “our revenue from Britain is a mere $A, since most of our sales are exports and should morally count as revenue in the country of destination. Since we export so much of our produce, highly successfully, then $A is far lower than our production costs in Britain of $B, so Britain is a net negative $C for us and we would like to skip the corporation tax this year thanks”.
Which is why we don’t structure things that way. And there's definitely a "can't have things two ways" problem here if we wanted (and "we" is going to mean international effort) to rewrite the laws
* Google's claim, as I understand it, is that the sales-related bits in London are basically back-office operations and the actual sales are finalised at their - admittedly much larger and higher-staffed, not just a nameplate - offices in Ireland. But this strikes me as something where there is surely an element of subjectivity. Perhaps campaigners could reasonably hope to push/shame Google into invoicing a certain % of sales to London not Dublin. Certainly if we applied a philosophical "sine qua non" approach, there must be a certain proportion of sales which take place only because of the help from the London office, even if we can't pin down which ones exactly, and even if the deal is technically sealed in Ireland.
Are you saying that McDonell, the entire newspaper industry and SeanT do not know what they are talking about?
I'm gobsmacked!
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley is reported to have told business leaders last week that the Prime Minister plans to ‘choreograph’ a row with French president Francois Hollande before putting his new deal on Europe to voters in an in/out referendum in the following months."
Another senior Tory said it was vital for the Prime Minister’s talks to have some ‘theatre’ to persuade voters that Mr Cameron had fought hard for Britain in the negotiations, which will be conducted behind closed doors."
Not only is the renegotiation a sham, the government openly admits it is. They really are banking on the public being incredibly stupid or totally uninterested.
We have a number of serious vertical players too. Amadeus in Spain provides the software that backends pretty much the entire airline industry. Indra (also in Spain) provides the software used in almost every air traffic control room in the world. Dassault Systemes in France is the leading producer of Computer Aided Design software: most cars and planes built in the world will have designed using Dassault software. And let's not forget Ubi Soft (also French), which is the third largest independent video game company in the world.
Kippers are a paranoid bunch!
Our lack of software companies is down to small thinking UK management and short termist shareholders.
But my mother was complaining this weekend that she doesn't know which way to vote & she hates being a floating voter
She was leave, but someone then convinced her based on the Norwegian "fax democracy" argument - I corrected her on that (@RichardTyndall, you'd better not have been telling porkies!) And now she is leaning that way again
Was also approached, interestingly enough, by a younger son of old family that is still seriously influential in their part of the country. They are actively looking to work for "leave" which was somewhat unexpected, as the individual is delightful but utterly metropolitan in outlook*
(* although he did tell me that the last time he met Cameron, the PM had a fat cigar in his mouth and a shotgun on his arm...)
Only a fool would believe that.
There's Areva in Cambridge too: they do the software you'd use if you wanted to build (and simulate) a nuclear power plant or equivalent.
Codemasters, Eidos, DNA Design (now Rockstar) are all subsidiaries of larger companies.
Gaming in the UK is probably the most productive software sector after banking and finance software.
As others have said they way forward is to work on international agreements, but this is very dry and boring when you could just write GOOGLE BAD!!! in 60-point letters on page 1 of a newspaper instead.
You'd think with advances in IT that this kind of thing would be easier and cheaper. What are they doing with the £billions the department is paid at the moment?
I merely suggest that the situation is now reaching the point where the public will not continue to put up with it. Something will change.
Obviously this all depends on what one means by 1st division. To me it means a business with giant, industry-bestriding scale but also one that is historically significant, such that one can speak of the "XXX era".
IBM, Microsoft, Google, Facebook are or were such companies. Imo SAP and ARM are not.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3422509/Two-migrants-places-German-children-s-home-claiming-15-17-arrested-sexually-assaulting-12-year-old-girl-threatening-kill-witness-aged-SIX.html
ARM, on the other hand, virtually invented the low-power-consumption CPU market, which makes smartphones possible.
Of course, the popular press sells papers by pandering to its readers' prejudices, feeding their paranoia and predicting apocalyptic events on a daily basis.
Perhaps it's time they considered running a campaign to get Jonathan Harmsworth to pay more tax too.
Yes, ARM passes the historical significance test and I guess one can say it has scale in terms of the epic number of processors based on its designs. Obviously its revenue is tiny in relative terms but perhaps that doesn't signify.
I don't think it's any secret that there'll be lots of You Grunt, I'll Groan (as Alistair Meeks puts it) in the run up to the Summit.
Eventually.
Here's alumnus Dan Hannan, only annoyed that they gave the idiot an audience in the first place.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/12130199/Thank-goodness-my-beloved-Oriel-College-has-come-to-its-senses-its-about-time.html
The more polite of the comments under the article suggest that maybe the Rhodes Scholarship trustees should find better ways to spend their funds than on this egotistical troublemaker.
http://news.sky.com/story/1632263/cult-leaders-daughter-he-was-a-psychopath
When the Berlin Wall fell, all of eastern Europe had to consider what it would do about its communist statuary. Different decisions were made in different countries (and sometimes in different parts of the same country).
I can well understand why to a young black South African student a statue of Rhodes is as symbolic of oppression as a statue of Lenin would be to a young Pole.
I've havered back and forth on this one. Ultimately I come to the view that if it were my decision I would leave the statue of Rhodes standing, given that its erection reflected his generosity of his funding of the college rather than a statement of political intent. I would feel differently if the struggles of southern Africa had a particularly close connection with rural Oxfordshire, but they don't.
It's not a straightforward question for me though.
Clinton 48%
Sanders 40%
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_IA_12916.pdf
GOP
Trump 31%
Cruz 21%
Rubio 10%
Carson 9%
Bush 5%
Dems
Clinton 50%
Sanders 38%
http://www.investors.com/politics/trumps-lead-shrinks-as-attacks-on-cruz-appear-to-backfire-poll/
Only fools surround themselves those that only ever agree with their opinions. Education is about being challenged and having debates.
I'm no fan of Rhodes, I think he was probably a white supremacist, but given the era that's not exactly some kind of massive revelation, most colonialists from Britain were of the same opinion, Rhodes was just more successful than most.
Woodhouse College, where I did my A-Levels, famously has a tree planted there that was indirectly gifted by the Third Reich. This is in Finchley where there are a very large number of Jewish students, yet the college has kept it and the students all knew it as the "Hitler Tree". They haven't removed the tree and hopefully they won't.
My point is that no one can change history, as hard as we try or might want to, it is fixed, by trying to airbrush those bits out that people are offended to create "safe spaces" for weak minded fools we do no favours to our children.
GOP
Cruz: 30 (14)
Trump: 25 (22)
Rubio: 12 (7)
Bush: 8 (13)
Carson 5 (23)
Christie: 3 (2)
Kasich: 3 N/A
Fiorina: 2 (5)
Huckabee: 1 (3)
Paul: 1 (1)
Democrats
Clinton 50%
Sanders 15%
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2016/01/28/cruz-now-leads-trump-among-gop-candidates-in-latest-ktvt-cbs-11-dixie-strategies-texas-poll/
GOP
Trump 24%
Rubio 18%
Cruz 16%
Dems
Clinton 45%
Sanders 43%
General Election
Clinton 45%, Rubio 44%
Clinton 45%, Cruz 44%
Clinton 47%, Trump 38%
Sanders 49% Rubio 38%
Sanders 50% Rubio 38%
Sanders 52% Trump 34%
https://twitter.com/MULawPoll/status/692774346599862272
The notion that newspapers are in the least bit objective is of course risible.
In the very first instance they have every desire and self interest to do down any government and indeed any party because they wish to remain above the law themselves and feel free to smear all and sundry without any fear of retribution.
The tabloidisation of the broadsheets is an ongoing disgrace and the removal of anything even closely approximating to journalism from their pages is a self evident shameful disaster.
And then there is the Daily Mail...
http://betanews.com/2016/01/23/google-agrees-to-pay-130m-back-tax-in-the-uk/ is the earliest version of the story I can quickly find, from last Friday.