[mootothemax]

>362 Facebook staff on an average salary of say £65,000 will contribute at least £7,230,696.60 in taxes and NI to HMRC.

Why should Facebook get to enjoy an advantage over 36 companies employing 10 people each at a similar average salary?

>If I had a choice between Facebook paying £4,327 in corporation tax but employing over 350 highly skilled individuals in the UK, or relocating to somewhere like Dublin due to aggressive taxation policies. I know what I would pick.

You'd prefer every large company to be based in the UK and not pay corporation tax?

Of course not.

Personally, I think we're long overdue another huge waste like DeLorean coming along.

[marrs]

    Why should Facebook get to enjoy an advantage over
    36 companies employing 10 people each at a similar
    average salary?

Let's turn it around. How would you go about taxing a corporation that didn't make much profit last year

[mootothemax]

>Let's turn it around. How would you go about taxing a corporation that didn't make much profit last year

From the article:

"[T]he firm also paid its 362 UK staff a total of £35.4m in share bonuses."

That says to me that it'd be worth trying to figure out how to reconcile that against "a pre-tax loss of £28.5m."

[the_mitsuhiko]

So you should not be entitled to bonuses when you work in the UK office because the UK office does not have enough revenue to make up for the cost of the workforce, but the same people in the SFO office should?

[mootothemax]

>So you should not be entitled to bonuses when you work in the UK office because the UK office does not have enough revenue to make up for the cost of the workforce, but the same people in the SFO office should?

1. I didn't say that.

2. What's to stop the SFO office issuing the bonuses?

[the_mitsuhiko]

> 2. What's to stop the SFO office issuing the bonuses?

That's basically what is happening? The company made a loss, so that money came from somewhere else to pay for it.

[marrs]

But those are shares. They have no monetary value until you try to draw a dividend or sell them, at which point you have to pay tax again.

The pre-tax loss is for the UK operation, not the global entity as a whole.

It seems that the real question is not about what Facebook UK's corporation tax bill should be but how we want to deal with global corporations as a whole and how we want to benefit from that relationship.

My gut feeling is that if you are dealing with the tiny arm of a very successful US company, you are not in much of a position to negotiate.