Turnover tax

[yasockie]

Ken Livingstone proposed turnover tax
possibly a perfect tool to stifle economic activity...

[doodab]

It might be a legitimate way to approach transfer pricing. If 90% of turnover is offshored avoiding tax on profit why not tax it as turnover instead?

[AtW]

If I remember correctly Ken allegedly used Ltd himself to get a big wad of cash which he later allegedly paid out in parts thereby avoiding (allegedly) high rate of tax.

Turnover tax idea has got to be among the most cretinous ones as profitability varies massively in different sectors.

[MicrosoftBob]

It might be a legitimate way to approach transfer pricing. If 90% of turnover is offshored avoiding tax on profit why not tax it as turnover instead?

Why not have a transfer pricing tax and be done with it ?, just call it an offshore tax avoidance charge

[Mich the Tester]

Why not have a transfer pricing tax and be done with it ?, just call it an offshore tax avoidance charge

Why not have a government that stops pissing so much money into the wind?

[doodab]

Why not have a transfer pricing tax and be done with it ?, just call it an offshore tax avoidance charge

Good idea

[DirtyDog]

It might be a legitimate way to approach transfer pricing. If 90% of turnover is offshored avoiding tax on profit why not tax it as turnover instead?

As the article says, if you taxed turnover at 1% for Google, you'd get £30 million instead of £11; for Amazon it goes from £2.4m to £43m.

Of course you'd have to piss off the big companies who aggressively avoid paying corporation tax in this country, so it's not going to happen.

[d000hg]

If I remember correctly Ken allegedly used Ltd himself to get a big wad of cash which he later allegedly paid out in parts thereby avoiding (allegedly) high rate of tax.

Turnover tax idea has got to be among the most cretinous ones as profitability varies massively in different sectors.

So does VAT.

[MicrosoftBob]

Why not have a government that stops pissing so much money into the wind?

To do that involves having a smaller government and public sector, even Maggie struggled to do that!

[VectraMan]

As the article says, if you taxed turnover at 1% for Google, you'd get £30 million instead of £11; for Amazon it goes from £2.4m to £43m.

I don't know why Amazon always get attacked in these debates as they a) sell real things that cost money, and b) have always operated fairly low profit margins (arguably as a way to put others out of business but that's a different issue). Google, claiming they only make money in Ireland, is a bit more difficult to defend. Apple make terrifying profits everywhere in the world but somehow manage to not pay tax anywhere, and yet are never mentioned in these stories, no doubt because media types are drooling Jobsian fanbois.

And for companies that sell mostly to the public, VAT is a turnover tax.