Tax avoidance certainly isn't *illegal*, but it is sometimes *immoral*, such as when a multinational pretends that it is conducting its business in a low-tax country while actually making most of its profits elsewhere. It robs the latter countries of revenue that its citizens are paying for. Companies who do that may be within their *legal *rights, but clearly are not within any definition of *moral *rights.
The problem with Katie's suggested solution is that it simply does not work. Governments have no track record at all of being able to fix these sort of problems. What does work is consumer pressure and the consequences of bad publicity for companies who cheat us of their tax contributions. Every little bit of pressure helps, so let's keep on crowd-sourcing our concerns - although I do agree that we've probably exhausted this thread as a channel for these issues. -- Doug On 1 December 2013 16:08, Katie Chan <[email protected]> wrote: > On 01/12/2013 13:00, [email protected] wrote: > >> The issue which was raised was the reputation of the charity, not the cost >> of the vouchers. >> >> Bear in mind that WMF received £2M from Google in 2010 which falls within >> the period covered by the Public Accounts Committee report on Google >> published this summer: >> >> http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/ >> committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/ >> news/tax-avoidance-google/ >> >> “The company’s highly contrived tax arrangement has no purpose other than >> to enable the company to avoid UK corporation tax. >> “Google’s reputation has been damaged by these revelations of aggressive >> tax avoidance. That damage will not be repaired until the company arranges >> to pay its fair share of tax in the country where it earns the profits >> from the business it conducts." >> >> So, the Wikimedia movement in general, through this donation to the WMF >> can be seen as benefiting from Tax Avoidance. >> > > Tax avoidance isn't illegal. Companies and people are well within its > rights to minimise their tax liability to the extent the law let them. > > If you believe certain practise is unacceptable, then contact your MP and > or petition the government to change the law to make it illegal (or run for > parliament etc). > > > -- > Katie Chan > Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the > author and do not necessarily represent the view of any organisation the > author is associated with or employed by. > > > Experience is a good school but the fees are high. > - Heinrich Heine > > --- > This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus > protection is active. > http://www.avast.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org >
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
