Whitey Grandad

If I'd said 50p you'd all accuse me of exploiting child workers. There's no pleasing some people

You have obviously never been there. We call it a sink estate.

You may have heard this one: I recently asked my neighbours’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be Prime Minister someday. Both of her parents, who are Labour supporters, were standing there, so I asked her, ‘If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?’ She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’ Her parents beamed with pride. ’Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re Prime Minister to do that! You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and clear up my yard, and I’ll pay you £50. Then I’ll take you over to the supermarket where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the £50 to use toward food and a new house.‘ She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the £50?” I said ‘Welcome to the Conservatives.’

Squashed

If that were true they wouldn't have produced this: http://www.kpmg.com/uk/en/issuesandinsights/articlespublications/pages/budget-2015-diverted-profits-tax.aspx

We can only hope ?

All things must pass. But even a functioning stadium is dead and lifeless on a non-match day.

If he'd joined us that may have happened. We shall never know.

There has been some international activity on this, apparently: http://www.oecd.org/ctp/beps.htm The chancellor's proposed Diverted Profits Tax may cause international problems if it disrupts any concerted action.

That's fair comment, I was just playing 'what if'.

When you buy a player (you pay a fee in order to get his contract) the value of the player increases your capital assets and this value is usually written down over the term of the contract, so a £20m deal for 4 years will increase your book value by £20m which will then decrease by £5m per season. The terms of the deal don't alter this basic process but will affect the cash flow. For this reason loans are sometimes more attractive because the player's value won't affect your capital value much and may ease your Corporation Tax liabilities. It's a bit like the difference between buying a car outright or just leasing it. As I understand it cash upfront deals are not common these days although Abramovich was doing that when he took over Chelsea and started splashing the cash.

All very true and I understand the reasons for him leaving but I think we would have done better if we had kept him for this season.

The headline figures are usually misleading. 'A deal worth up to £...' is common wording.

There are big headline cases that need to be addressed, if only because it rankles with the bulk of the honest British taxpayer, but let's not kid ourselves that clamping down on these aggressive tax avoiders will make the slightest difference to what any of us pay ourselves. If anybody feels badly about them the best thing is to avoid their products. For Starbucks this is easy.

Yes indeed. I'm afraid that's the wonder of the Internet.

I assume you're talking about transfer pricing? This is very difficult to prove but there are rules in place to regulate it. Tax on profits will have to be paid somewhere, the problems occur where our tax rates are significantly higher than other comparable countries, Eire for example. There will still be VAT on these goods. Are you thinking of a particular company? I know nothing about Chris Moyles but HMRC rules on operating a business are very strictly defined and it's not up to him to decide whether or not he is bona fide. HMRC are very aggressive and unreasonable on these matters and there is no room for negotiation.

Why the abuse? If you don't like it then change the law.

You'd need to look at the next year's figures to see that.

Legally there is nothing such thing as 'spirit of the law'.

Me too.

That all depends on what you consider is a 'fair share'. And please mind your language, not everybody thinks as vindictively as you.

That's not what I said. The example you give is a very small proportion of the working population and merely illustrates the ridiculous anomalies of the tax system that Gordon Brown created.

That's rubbish. Are you saying that the the only way anybody ever earns any money is because of public subsidies? High taxes restrict your ability to earn, not enhance it.

The public sector has never managed anything at a profit.

You're quite right, we are severely lacking in any sort of light railway/tramway system. Hampshire County Council had many such schemes planned for years but eventually had to give up when there was no government money forthcoming. No votes in it, of course.