Out of Pod Experience

Well, just realised there wasn't anything about this up, and hoping that CCP Falcon is cool with this economic commentary

I'm not quite sure how well known it is outside of the UK right now that Starbucks, Google and Amazon are in a spot of bother. It turns out these foreign multinationals, had been perhaps abusing the tax code to decrease the amount of Tax that they were paying by operating multiple companies within the EU, and having a Dutch company charge their British company royalties for using the Starbucks logo internally. This kind of approach lead to tax payments of around £9m over the last decade, on the basis of not earning much, and in fact a loss in the UK over the last few years.

And then someone in the Tax office (Her Majesties Revenue and Customs, HRMC) noticed that in the US Starbucks was reporting healthy profits, and different figures to HRMC. This has lead to a mass boycott of Stabucks, occupations by protests to the point where Starbucks was commerialy threatened enough to unilaterally declare it was going to pay more taxes.

There is a joke here that people pay taxes, and megacorps can choose, or thats the gist of it. British humour being what it is, I don't thing that Starbucks just went and made itself the punchline. The current estimates that this announcement to pay £10M/year has backfired and turned Starbucks into the most despised corporation of the liberal, Guardian reading, coffee swilling Apple Mac utilising target market of Starbucks. Estimated damages to the reputation of the corproation are being compounded by cutting staff benefits and break hours. Estimated compound damage is up to 24% of revenue.

Then there's the fact that they offered HMRC money to voluntarily pay more tax, thus motivating them to perform a full investigation and a potential backlog of tax charges, possibly based off of their profit from the UK division on their Dividend sheets.

As it stands, Parliamentary enquiry, HMRC investigation and now the Conservative party are going into an election with easy political capital to be made by clamping down on these tax loopholes which are all over the media daily now.

Popcorn anyone?

Nah, legaly they are the first of a group to be caught and be admitting culpability by offering to pay more taxes. The point is that Starbucks are the ones being used as a proving ground in the investigations to see how much the rest of the corporations owe. Its different when its morally bankrupt but legal, but now it looks like Politicians have more to gain by enforcing the law on the corporations than on being complicit to stimulate growth. A large section of the UK's economy is composed of these entities, so it will be disproportionately bigger in its effect.

Somebody set up us the bomb.

I heard Starbucks spends more money on employee benefits than coffee beans.

Go Starbucks!

+1 @ Starbucks

Dude I had two dark roast mediums at Starbucks yesterday, I was so wired. They even had ...CHRISTMAS decorations all over the place, they gotta be seriously hated. Maybe you guys can just force them out, then open government owned coffee shops (and everything else). Just go ahead and take that last step, you're on your way that way anyhoot. Just do like France is doing, and Greece has already done. How could it ever fail???

Yeah, but your weird little coffee place isn't starbucks

What? ...never heard of it. Is that like this place?

Eww. The Guardian.

With the Guardian's readership plummeting, and Guido Fawkes (bless him them), recently observing both kettle and pot and calling out black on each vis a vis Polly Toy 'n' Bee and the her Islington/Tuscany set on this very subject, one's as bad as t'other, so it would appear. Allegedly.

I love Guido -he does make exceedingly good scandals.

Ah Starbucks.

Good thing they have such a small representation here in Portugal. I mean, every 2-bit corner coffee shop here serves 60 cent expressos, and we have like 4 or 5 in each corner.

TBH, if people are actually up in arms over this and actively boycotting Starbuck's in the UK, then I envy you. Here in the U.S. people would just shrug and say, "Business as usual for a large corporation. Nothing I can do about it, so I'll just get back to doing whatever it is that I was doing and hope things work themselves out."

Basically, we're so used to crap like this happening and nothing being done that most of us have stopped trying. It really sucks.