Vodafone dodge £6bn Tax bill #vodafoneuk #ukuncut

Vodafone closed its Oxford Street store in the face of protesters angry that the firm has been let off a potential £6bn tax bill amid deep welfare cuts.

Vodafone has confirmed the shop will remain shut until it is safe to open it again.

However, it disputes not paying a £6bn tax bill.

The firm said that it had been in negotiations with HM Revenue and Customs regarding a tax assessment, but did not know where the £6bn figure had come from.

In July Vodafone agreed to pay HMRC £1.2bn to settle a long-running dispute, despite having put aside £2.2bn to cover it.

The HMRC bill related to so-called Controlled Foreign Companies (CFC) liabilities, which applies to firms that are controlled by UK residents but which pay tax on their earnings abroad at a lower rate.

Protesters demonstrated outside the flagship store with banners branding the company 'tax dodgers' and urging the company to 'Pay your taxes, save our welfare state'.

Protesters used Twitter to upload pictures and spread word of the demonstration.

Last month, HM Revenue & Customs allowed the phone giant to avoid paying vast amounts of tax on profits racked up by a subsidiary based in a tax haven.

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• #vodafoneuk
• #climatecamp
• #ukuncut
• Climate Camp
• Vodafone
• Tax Evasion
• Spending Cuts

[dhirun4]

orange-hoodie.blogspot.com

[Joonagoona]

Eastielover is a government spy.

[duckbiter]

I keep seeing the number 107. Why? What does it mean?

[hennimore1]

Good work guys! UKUncut are my heroes of 2011!

[fronswa]

@spicealbert He's not right btw. @eastielover The were found to be evading tax by trying to pay it in Luxembourg(at a cheaper rate). They even asked HMRC if it was OK to do this. They said no. Vodafone took the risk and did it anyway. Whether or not Vodafone evaded tax is not in dispute. They did. The only murky part of it is by how much they tried to evade.

[spicealbert]

@eastielover As a technical term, you could be right (although recent resignations suggest something dodgy was going on). In any other sense, you're wrong. Vodafone evades paying its tax. Most people would call that tax evasion. Companies like this simply do deals with the Treasury, paying whatever they like. They don't pay the tax that they owe. Little people like me can't do deals with the Treasury whether we want to or not.

[park3r7]

The good old plod, just doing their job.... Anyone else sick of the police, who are in the same boat as the rest of us, but continue to do the dirty work. Traitors. Why don't you guys get some balls and educate yourselves and stand back and observe, instead of being on the side of Vodafone. Lets face it, police pensions have taken the hit like everyone else and it's because of the likes of these tax dodgers that this has happened. There is a big club and you an i are not in the big club.

[cloudbusterman]

Vodophone enjoy the societal safety benefits paid for by other (thereby disadvantaged) companies that pay UK corporation tax, but do not pay fully themselves! This is anti-competitive parasitism, a killer & predatory intentional loophole in EC law.

Answer: wealth or asset tax (WT) to be paid by corporations deductible from corporation tax (CT) though complexly.

For Vodolike example:

£6billion Wealth Tax deductible from £6 billion CT = £0 to pay.

£6 billion WT from £10 CT = £6 billion to pay.

[nowthatsinteresting1]

Another reason to be angry at vodaphone: they obviously didn't pay enough for the right to use British airwaves (the right to this use being sold to them by the government). If they had paid the real market value, they wouldn't be making the obscene profits they currently are - and all for a business that has very little in the way of overheads. We were robbed by our own government - as usual.

[pharrison0072010]

A made up figure as an excuse for any unemployed bums to 'protest'. If they got a job and paid taxes there wouldn't be an issue