Who knew that Boots is now Swiss-owned and probably avoiding around £100m pa UK tax?

tightus_wad

£100m isn't much compared to the amount of VAT they will be paying, the people they keep in work - the building rent, rates they pay etc. etc.therefore, the TAX these people pay. Hence government not that bothered.

Loanranger

The good citizens of Nottingham will be very interested to hear that the armed thugs are taking their jobs away from them. Nice one, lads, well done.

ManAtHome

Who knew - anyone who listened to File on 4 around 6 weeks ago I suppose http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11618922 - must take longer to summarise radio progs than reprint press releases...

Doc_N

ManAtHome wrote: »

Who knew - anyone who listened to File on 4 around 6 weeks ago I suppose http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11618922 - must take longer to summarise radio progs than reprint press releases...

I heard it - interesting programme. Pity it didn't get wider coverage.

mervyn67

Most of the utility companies are owned by "non-English". Most of our food is not home produced.Most of what we buy is not made here. Most of the profit made in this country is not taxable here. Most of the money made from our sport (mainly football) goes out of the country.How are we still here? or am I the omly Anglophile left?

Doc_N

tightus_wad wrote: »

£100m isn't much compared to the amount of VAT they will be paying, the people they keep in work - the building rent, rates they pay etc. etc.therefore, the TAX these people pay. Hence government not that bothered.

You have to be joking. £100m isn't much? Have you any idea how many schools that would build?

£100m of lost profits will certainly worry Boots once enough people become aware of their activities and decide that Boots isn't the nice, cuddly, friendly Nottingham-based company that they thought it was.

Image is everything - these are sharks. :mad:

Doc_N

mervyn67 wrote: »

Most of the utility companies are owned by "non-English". Most of our food is not home produced.Most of what we buy is not made here. Most of the profit made in this country is not taxable here. Most of the money made from our sport (mainly football) goes out of the country.How are we still here? or am I the omly Anglophile left?

I've got no problem with foreign owned companies, so long as a reasonable amount of UK tax is paid on UK profits.

That's not the case with Boots, though.

eslick

so many companies do this, if you have a paypal account you will remember a few years ago getting a mail telling you they had transferred their UK business to luxembourg, all of the big companies do it, doesnt make it right but shouldnt single out boots as the only one though.

Cadburys is the latest, Kraft is moving them as well.

The_Economist

Doc_N wrote: »

Fascinating article in the Guardian today about Boots:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/11/boots-switzerland-uk

Do we really want to be buying anything at all from a company like Boots that now chooses not to contribute its fair share towards UK taxes? Whatever Boots decides not to pay has to come from the rest of us, who have no choice.

In June 2008, after more than a century and a half in the UK, Boots moved out of the country to Switzerland. The British household name had been acquired, along with its parent company, Alliance Boots, in Europe's largest private equity deal in 2007, thanks to £9.3bn of borrowing from banks and other investors. Private equity's gain turned out to be the UK revenue's loss.

Ten years ago the Boots group generally paid about one-third of its profits in UK tax. The Revenue could expect to see a tax charge around the £120-£150m mark each year, with over £100m of that coming from Boots the Chemist.

Then came the move to the low-tax Swiss canton of Zug. Alliance Boots GmbH is now registered at Zug's 94 Baarerstrasse, an address that is home to a post office. After huge interest payments, its worldwide profits last year were £475m. It is hard to see which parts of the company are now making what, but the cashflow statement for the year to March 2010 shows that just £14m was recorded as the tax charge on those profits – that is, just 3% of profits. John Ralfe, the former head of corporate finance at Boots, told us he calculated that, "the UK has lost about £100m a year in tax as a result".

Never mind we will just have to pay a little more in tax out of our wages. No change there then.

Loanranger

Boots is based in Nottingham, just as it always has been. It's one of the major manufacturing and retailing employers in the area. They moved their registered office to Switzerland, no law against that and nothing the Labour government of the day could do to stop them.

Boycotting Boots could potentially badly damage the jobs of thousands of people throughout the UK and particularly in Nottingham.

Yes, well done lads, good to know that the loony left will stop at nothing to help put the working classes on the dole.