Well, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later…
And in practical terms, companies actually do not bear the burden of a tax. Companies are not individuals. They are organisations designed to produce and supply things. They employ people, machinery, intellectual property, capital, raw materials, and so on, and combine them to produce things for people. Companies are intermediaries.
If a company has to pay as tax some of the money it makes from selling its output, that leaves it with less to distribute. So it pays less to shareholders, employs fewer workers, and buys less in the way of raw materials. And of course it makes and sells fewer goods. In other words, some of the profits may be handed over by the company, but the burden is borne by the company’s shareholders, employees, suppliers, and customers.
All of which, we already know. None of this is remotely new or difficult to understand – unless you are a UK Uncut cretin, of course. What Messrs Giampolo and Wood are telling the economic illiterates over at CiF is nothing more than a dose of reality. Reality that doesn’t go down to well with the natives.
It isn’t the article that provides the free entertainment, it’s the combination of ignorance, economic illiteracy and sheer spite below the line that does that.
And, for any passing Guardianista who may happen by, I’ll repeat; tax avoidance is perfectly legal, is not immoral and is a sacred duty. I fully intend to avoid as much as possible, thereby reducing the amount available to the spendthrifts on the green benches to piss up the wall on foreign space programmes, fake charities, quangos, third sector parasites and third world kletocracies; not to mention vast, wasteful IT projects and spying on the citizen.
I fired the government years ago,glad to see youve been on the fire the government ban wagon too!
One exception.
Space programmes in which we have a share (Eurospace) are not a waste of money.
However, sending money to India (which also has a space programme) IS a waste of money.