can pay, won’t pay
Have I mentioned that I don’t approve of Sir Philip Green’s tax avoidance measure of paying a £1.2Bn dividend to his Monaco residing non-domiciled wife, Tina? Oh, only a couple of times. And what about Vodafone’s tricky little £6Bn loophole exploitation? Ah, yeah I may have let it slip out once or twice. The latest one in an apparent long-line of such creative corporate measures is Kraft, the new owners of Cadbury, who are allegedly working on a plan to shift key parts of the 186 year old business to Switzerland, which will result in depriving the UK of many tax millions.
In a move first devised by Pepsico for its UK subsidiary Walker Crisps, Kraft is reorganising the Bourneville-based UK business to allow much of the profit to be booked via Switzerland and consequently at a much reduced rate of corporation tax. Rather cunningly, key members of staff are ‘relocated’ and hey presto, the UK company is no longer recognised as owning either the raw materials or the finished goods. The UK entity will act as only the sales and distribution arm selling Kraft owned product to the UK market. Handy that. It means the devious organisation is likely to be charged corporation tax at somewhere between 8-15% as opposed to the UK level of 28%.
But really it should come as no surprise whatsoever – remember this is a company that pledged to retain a key Cadbury factory in Bristol, in order to win support for the £11Bn bid, only to announce its closure, with the loss of 400 jobs, just days after successfully gaining control. And in an alarming display of arrogance and dismissal, Kraft boss Irene Rosenfeld then declined to appear in front of MPs investigating the takeover. Something along the lines of ‘F*ck you’ was her comment. Nice.
I guess the good news is that the vast majority of the Cadbury workforce will remain completely unaffected by this change but doesn’t this just further prove the tax-fiddling nature of the technicality scam? Last year Cadbury paid almost £200m to HMRC and this, with the government’s £83Bn of public sector spending cuts coming our way, is going to be sorely missed. Furthermore, it’s claimed that over 15 times more revenue is lost to tax avoidance at the top, than is lost to benefit fraud at the bottom. Whilst it may be legal, the law is undoubtedly an ass and their actions are morally indefensible.
Also, for years the establishment has complained about the apathy of the populace, particularly the young, today. But what happens when we do find our voice? We are derided at best as misguided and, at worst, as violent anarchic agitators intent on mayhem and destruction. On the contrary, I personally see this as a fine example of attempting to hold those responsible to account and taking them to task. Forcing the Philip Green’s and Vodafone’s of this country to pay up by shutting down their stores is part of a long-standing tradition of peaceful action, going back to the window-breakers of the suffragettes, that has (grudgingly) yielded us such fundamental benefits as universal suffrage. Long may it continue.
In earlier posts I advised an individual boycott of Vodafone product and can personally assure you I’ve not been in Miss Selfridge (ooeerr missuss), Dorothy Perkins, Burton or Topshop since. The same has to be applied to Cadbury’s choccies I’m afraid, along with Kraft’s brands which include Toblerone, Dairylea triangles and Ritz crackers. And just before Christmas as well. B*gger.
