Cadbury leaves a bitter taste in their mouth

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Newsjock Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sat Dec-04-10 12:48 AM
Original message
Kraft plans to move Cadbury to Switzerland to avoid UK taxes
   
Source: The Guardian

The new US owners of Cadbury's chocolate are working on a secret plan to shift key parts of the 186-year-old British business to Switzerland in a move likely to deprive the UK exchequer of millions of pounds of tax.

Kraft, which took control of Cadbury in an £11bn takeover this year, intends to turn the firm into a subsidiary of a new Swiss company. The new structure would slash its bill for UK corporation tax. Last year, Cadbury handed over £200m to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

Kraft's plans, uncovered by the Guardian, are likely to fuel anger at the manoeuvres used by big corporations to avoid tax. A fast-growing group of activists, inspired by the UK Uncut group, plan to protest tomorrow in nine cities across the country against what they view as unfair tax avoidance by big companies on high streets.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/03/kraft-ca...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9684576&mesg_id=9684576

marmar Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sat Dec-04-10 12:50 AM
Response to Original message
1. Eventually, corporations will run out of countries to f**k over.

The Swiss aren't ****ed, they're gaining another tax revenue stream.

mike_c Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sat Dec-04-10 12:54 AM
Response to Original message
3. this is particularly awful for Cadburys...
   
Edited on Sat Dec-04-10 12:55 AM by mike_c
...which was founded by Quakers with a strong service and "giving back to the community" ethic. If I recall correctly, that ethic has always been prominent throughout most of the company's history. Now it seems that profit is the only virtue left.

Hey, super-genius,

Would you prefer they operated at net loses every year?

And to think he's allowed to teach.

onehandle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sat Dec-04-10 12:56 AM
Response to Original message
4. Switzerland and other tax criminal havens need to penalized severely. nt

By who?

They're free and independent nations.

Oh, that's right: you people loathe freedom and independence. You demand all bow to your will.

ProgressiveProfessor Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sat Dec-04-10 10:51 AM
Response to Reply #4
6. Avoidance is legal, evasion is not
   
Don't like it? Change the laws

WinkyDink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Sat Dec-04-10 11:58 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. That would be the point.

I think he meant the UKs laws but that would be a RW talking point.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Kraft's plans, uncovered by the Guardian, are likely to fuel anger at the manoeuvres used by big corporations to avoid tax. A fast-growing group of activists, inspired by the UK Uncut group, plan to protest tomorrow in nine cities across the country against what they view as unfair tax avoidance by big companies on high streets.

Such a demonstration of the legendary English 'Work ethic' (cough) seems like a positively brilliant way to get them to hasten the move.

No offense Bijou, but the English are kind of notorious for random, pointless strikes and 'job actions' over the most trivial cause.  Some years ago a German attorney I knew was telling me about a trip he'd taken to England (The Germans are great tourists, when they have the means), and his train stopped in the middle of a field of grain, no station in sight.  Someone pulled up in a van and picked up the train crew, it eventuated that they had planned a strike to start at some given time, and when that hour struck, they just stopped everything on the entire system.   

[ColonialMarine0431]

Why do the DUmmies think so many U.S. corporations have moved parts of their operations overseas?

[DefiantSix]

Why do the DUmmies think so many U.S. corporations have moved parts of their operations overseas?

All part of the VRWC plan to grind the proletariat masses under the bootheels of corporate oligarchs - because shit; when the shareholders are unimpressed with their quarterly dividends, ground up proletariat masses make a wonderful consolation prize.[/DUmbshit-think]

[Texacon]

Wonder if there are any DUmmies who will own up to using tax deductions on that thread ... hmmmm

DUmmies, it's the same thing.  If you use strategies to avoid paying taxes why would you have a problem with a company doing the same?

KC

[bijou]

Such a demonstration of the legendary English 'Work ethic' (cough) seems like a positively brilliant way to get them to hasten the move.

No offense Bijou, but the English are kind of notorious for random, pointless strikes and 'job actions' over the most trivial cause.  Some years ago a German attorney I knew was telling me about a trip he'd taken to England (The Germans are great tourists, when they have the means), and his train stopped in the middle of a field of grain, no station in sight.  Someone pulled up in a van and picked up the train crew, it eventuated that they had planned a strike to start at some given time, and when that hour struck, they just stopped everything on the entire system.   

That must have been quite some years ago, there are relatively few strikes and legal strikes have to be approved in advance by a majority of union members in a secret ballot, the courts are quite relaxed about overturning dodgy ballots too.

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Bob Crow and his band of merry men will be making life a misery for hundreds of thousands of Londoners next week as the RMT union's dispute with Transport for London brings much of the Tube network grinding to a halt for the fourth time since September.

As well as costing the capital's economy an estimated £50 million a day, the aggravating stoppages - alongside a BBC walkout and a fire-fighter dispute that came close to a Bonfire Night walkout - have fuelled fears over the return of the 1970s "British disease" and rising unrest as public-sector workers campaign against cuts. In the private sector, British Airways has also been embroiled in a bitter clash with Unite this year.

A recent YouGov survey of human resources staff added to the unease, with one in five fearing that unions could hit their business in the next year. More than half admitted no experience at all in dealing with unions, and almost two-thirds had little or no knowledge of trade union legislation.

But despite the alarmist headlines, worries over "a new winter of discontent" and rising militancy look well wide of the mark. Truth to tell, unions have lost the clout they once had. Industrial action is undoubtedly on the rise, but the increase comes against historic lows. The latest figures show that in the year to September, 563,000 working days were lost to strikes, nearly three times higher than the previous year. The number of workers involved in actions was 301,000, compared with just 81,000 during the previous 12 months.

This is still a fraction of the 29.5 million working days lost in 1979's winter of discontent, and the 27 million days lost in 1984 at the height of the miners' strike. To put it into context, the impact of union action in the last year was still less than a tenth of the 7.6 million working days lost to flu.

Strikes were also dominated by the public sector, where membership is far higher and accounted 501,000 days lost. In contrast, private-sector employers lost just 62,000 days compared with 76,000 a year earlier. Formal research on the direct impact of strikes on economic growth is thin on the ground, although a study of 48 countries by the University of New Brunswick's Basu Sharma found that strike days lost knocked an estimated 0.4% off GDP on average during the 1970s. He concluded that strike-prone nations tend to suffer as domestic and foreign investors look to put their money elsewhere for safer returns, impacting potential growth.

But in terms of today's overall economy, the picture is very different. Membership among TUC-affiliated unions has dropped from 12.5 million in 1979 to just 6.2 million today. Organised labour has to fight for recognition and strikes are far harder to call after the legislative crackdown of the last Conservative government. Companies are also happy to play hard-ball and gain injunctions against actions on technicalities such as ballot irregularities.

In the private sector, union members now account for just 15.1% of the workforce, a 25% decline on the 21% share seen in 1995. Even in the public sector, union members as a share of the workforce has fallen back from 61.3% to 56.6% over the past 15 years.

The TUC stresses it is ready to take action over assaults on terms and conditions: pensions, for example, have already proved a touchstone issue at the BBC, and an expected wave of outsourcing could also spark ire if public sector pay and conditions are sig-nificantly watered down.

But with 600,000 public employees set to lose their jobs over the next five years, as well as a pay freeze kicking in as higher inflation squeezes household finances, you have to question the appetite for strikes among employees. Union card carriers are also much better paid on average, with a 15% premium over non-members, so general sympathy for prolonged disruption is likely to be limited - especially among those private sector workers who've taken pay freezes or even cuts on the chin in the past two years. Expect a more consensual tone to keep the public on side.

If the recovery falters next year, it won't be down to strike action or Crow's deluded call for a campaign of "civil disobedience" against cuts: it will be down to a brutal retrenchment in consumer spending, panic across the eurozone hitting trade and sustained rises in commodity prices as inflation-wary investors shift their money out of currencies.

Meanwhile, London and the South-East, with the lowest union densities in the country, are well-placed to lead what could be a decidedly two-speed recovery.

It's not much of a consolation, but try to keep it in mind when you're jamming yourself onto an overcrowded bus next Monday morning.

  http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/markets/article-23900138-yes-another-tube-strike-is-looming---but-dont-expect-a-winter-of-discontent.do

[TVDOC]

Some people just never learn.......I've said it a dozen times on this board......wealth is portable.......tax the hell out of it, and watch it disappear........

doc

[true_blood]

Those evil corporations trying to avoid taxes. 
Hey DUmmies, most of you mooch off the gubberment, so STFU!

[DumbAss Tanker]

Hey DUmmies, most of you mooch off the gubberment, so STFU!

That, my friend, is exactly why they're concerned about such rational economic decisions by large taxpayers.

[TVDOC]

That, my friend, is exactly why they're concerned about such rational economic decisions by large taxpayers.

You know.....I've never been able to comprehend the "magical thinking" that these people embroil themselves in that leads them to the conclusion that increasing the taxes grossly on high wage-earners is going to immediately create more revenue for them to divert into their pet social engineering programs.  

I have two of my children who fall in the income category that is referred to as "rich" by this debate, and both of them have stated that they will simply cap their US earnings slightly below the statutory limit, and either take the remainder in deferred stock options, or have it paid through offshore subsidiaries.......

They seem to labor under the mistaken assumption that higher earners are "trapped", and have no flexibility to outmaneuver these punitive tax laws.....

It simply isn't true, and has never been so, a nostalga trip back to the pre-Reagan years should illustrate this (assuming that they would ever learn anything from history......which is not a demonstrated trait so far).

doc