Google Invests $1 Billion To Build New London HQ 132
redletterdave writes "Google just purchased a 2.4-acre plot in the King's Cross Central development in London, where the company plans to build a brand-new, 1 million square foot office. Google reportedly invested about £650 million ($1.04 billion) on the property, which, when finished, will be valued at more than £1 billion ($1.6 billion). While Google traditionally leases its overseas offices, the company's decision to buy rather than rent in this case was likely tax motivated, since Google can't repatriate its cash to the U.S. without paying a hefty tax."
Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Interesting)
With companies like Google or Coke or Sony, is it one company....say Sony is a Japanese company, that incorporates businesses in many countries which are owned by the Japanese company, and just funnel the money back into the Japanese parent corp? What is to stop the independent company from doing its own thing or making different decisions?
Or in the case of Google, how do they have say over the UK iteration of the company? Are they all controlled by the same people? What are the relationships?
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Informative)
Bludger: Australian slang for someone who lives off government handouts, and who refuses to work.
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We used to call them "Wall Street Bankers", but then the Tea Party arose and convinced people (perhaps with the aid of a new source of funds) that WS wasn't the real problem.
Actually "Occupy WS" was the media creation ... (Score:4, Informative)
We used to call them "Wall Street Bankers", but then the Tea Party arose and convinced people (perhaps with the aid of a new source of funds) that WS wasn't the real problem.
Actually the Tea Party's roots are in reigning in gov't spending. It was in fact an organic grass roots movement. They went after Bush and the Republican controlled Congress when they were spending like mad. However it eventually became co-opted to a degree by the Republican party.
It was Occupy Wall Street that was a creation:
"The Canadian anarchist group Adbusters initiated the protest with assistance from the Manhattan-based public relations firm Workhorse, who was well-known for its successful work on client brands including Mercedes and Saks Fifth Avenue."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_wall_street [wikipedia.org]
And like the Tea Party became co-opted to a degree, though by the Democratic party.
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Bludger: Australian slang for someone who lives off government handouts, and who refuses to work.
Wrong, its got nothing to do with handouts, there are plenty of bludgers who are "fully" employed.
A better definition:
Bludger: Someone who deliberately avoids work.
I've known bludgers who will spend more effort avoiding a job than it would have taken to complete it.
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Informative)
bugger (noun)
1. Informal. a fellow or lad (used affectionately or abusively): a cute little bugger.
2. Informal. any object or thing.
3. Often Vulgar. a sodomite.
4. Chiefly British Slang.
- a. a despicable or contemptible person, especially a man.
- b. an annoying or troublesome thing, situation, etc.
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search-solely-for-profit [rather than search-for-general-utility in the economic sense] eavesdroppers in the middle of Kings Cross
As opposed to the tax spending eavesdroppers over in the middle of Vauxhall? ;^)
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Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the talk I've heard about doing something about this centered on convincing tax havens to raise their taxes, but as long as there is one around, doing so is pointless. And as a country, there are advantages to being a tax haven.
As a freelancer, I incorporated a few years ago and was surprised at how easy it is to reduce ones profit on paper, even for a small 1 man firm. And it's easy to set up a company nowadays, a few phone calls and a signature is all it takes; I'm considering setting up a company on Cyprus and sending my revenues there to enjoy an even lower tax rate. One of our royals was discovered doing the same thing, and after some public outcry, Internal Revenue hastened to proclaim that the whole thing was fully legit. So I do not feel bad about dodging taxes, not with IR approval and a royal endorsement.
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what are the moral implication of funnelling money through a tax haven that has no real purpose other than to reduce tax load? It may be legal, but is it moral?
This is the reason that I have avoided doing the same. Obviously, if your main base of business is in your own country, the corporation tax should also go back to you country to fund public expenses in your country, as opposed to a country which has nothing to do you your business apart from having low tax rates.
There are some people that go even further than that. They roam around Europe with no fixed abode, claim non-domiciled status and can avoid the majority of dividend tax. There is more to being honest than staying within the boundaries of the law.
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But things are getting to a point where I am starting to have moral objections to the weight of the tax burden, the distribution of that weight, and the way the collected monies are being spent. I'm a liberal (in the European sense, slightly right of centre) and a believer in small government. If the rest of us opt for big government instead, I'd still be happy to pay my fair share, provided that government does what we have a right to expect
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:4, Interesting)
Over here, I am called a conservative, but yes; we are classical liberals.
As your simpler, dumber brother on the other side of the pond; please allow me to condense your thought into a sound byte so we can understand it over here:
If a billion dollar building in downtown London is cheaper than the tax, then the tax is too high.
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And if it doesn't show up as taxable profit then it could mean that Google doesn't have anything in the USA that they want to spend 1 billion dollars on.
Also the billion dollar building might be worth more in the future than USD1 billion (inflation and all that).
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First, you need to distinguish between transfers of cash (non-taxable), profits, and expenses (which, from an accounting standpoint, is not exactly the same things as spending money.)
The big issues is that the US uses a residential tax system (you pay American taxes no matter where you earned the profit) and Briton uses a territorial tax system (you pay taxes on the profits earned in Britton – which is basically how the entire world operates.).
Here is the formula:
1 – TA – TB + (TA*TB)
TA =
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So what are the moral implication of funnelling money through a tax haven that has no real purpose other than to reduce tax load? It may be legal, but is it moral?
Um, none? Tax isn't a moral issue, it's a legal and economic one. It's like asking if there's a moral issue with not paying $110 against a $100 charge. The government calculates your tax bill. If you pay what it says you owe, you've discharged your obligation. If there are "loopholes" in the tax law, then the government has put them there, and presumably is ok with you using them.
There are some people that go even further than that. They roam around Europe with no fixed abode, claim non-domiciled status and can avoid the majority of dividend tax. There is more to being honest than staying within the boundaries of the law.
If they have no fixed address and keep moving around between countries, it's quite likely they're not receiving any benefits thei
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No. As non-sociopathic humans, we tend to see things in moral terms. However, I do not wish for my government to think about tax in moral terms: I want them to think about taxes in terms of maximising the global welfare of the people they administer. Arguably, this is a moral objective, but it should be attempted through pure optimisation.
This means that if I get 1€ in taxes by taxing the beejeezus out of a company, and 1.1€ by taxing nominally much less, I should pick the second option, because a
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Tax systems operate with the expectation of rationality, not morality. If you believe our system of taxation is immoral, the solution is to change the tax system, not to call rational actors immoral and expect them to change their behavior.
Many of the things people are upset about aren't even immoral, from the perspective of the other country. Localities create tax incentives to cause companies to change their behavior. This could be to install solar panels, or to locate jobs in a community that's starvi
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You say my post "would be correct" as if to say that it's incorrect in reality. Could you elaborate on that? Are you saying that it's impossible to change the tax system to align its rational incentives with your moral beliefs because there will always be someone immoral on the other side working harder to keep things the way they are? And, therefore, our goal should be to instead convince companies to behave irrationally by calling them names?
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And, therefore, our goal should be to instead convince companies to behave irrationally by calling them names?
Nah, we do so through laws. But calling
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Corporations immorally worked in the worst interests of their locations to change the law to something immoral.
I would wager that most of the companies people are upset at today had no hand whatsoever in influencing these laws. And really, when we're talking about ulterior motives like that, we're talking about the leaders of those companies, IMO, since companies have no motives.
The moral solution is to work to the betterment of all, and force that on the immoral ones if there is sufficient justification to do so.
Agreed.
Nah, we do so through laws. But calling them names helps get people to realize their actions are detrimental to everyone to help pass the regulations necessary
OK, so it sounds like we're in agreement then: the solution is to fix the laws and regulations so that rational actors become moral actors. The name-calling is just subterfuge: it looks like you're mad at the companies, but what you
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Ok. What's the moral amount to pay in taxes?
Don't bother looking at what the government says you should pay, because according to the OP, that's irrelevant - according to his argument, you can pay exactly what the government says you owe, but still be behaving immorally in regards to your taxes.
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Legal != moral
Avoiding decisions by masses != immoral, though it may be illegal
Democracy is just an abstraction of might makes right. Insofar as it runs hog wild, where is any inherent morality at all?
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The problem is the loophole, not the businesses or people that are using them. The playing field needs to be level by law.
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So what are the moral implication of funnelling money through a tax haven that has no real purpose other than to reduce tax load? It may be legal, but is it moral?
There are cases where it is moral.
The US is one of the few (and the only major one) that uses a residential system for taxes. Most other places use a territorial system. The different standards can be incompatible issues anytime there is a joint US / foreign operation. In theory taxes could be over 100% of profits. In practice this does not happen due to a host of tax treaties – but they cause their own headache.
Tax havens can be used to bypass this complexity and double (and triple) taxation. At the
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Well, didn't the papers apply social invectives against the royal, trying to make him feel bad about not contributing to your common greatness-through-government, and thus so why would any right-thinking person want to avoid it?
God, I feel dirty even talking like that. I am shit-covered. Literally gais, I literally have pig feces smeared all over me. Help!
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Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Interesting)
The unfortunate fact is that tax laws are fucking complex, and contain loopholes smart people can find and exploit.
If you are a large corporation, do you:
A) Pay a hundred million in tax.
B) Pay 20 million in legal research to find completely legal loopholes and ways to arrange your corporate structure so you can pay 10 million in tax.
There is then the wrinkle that to not do 'B' may be against your shareholders best interests.
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't really say there's much of a maybe about it... and as far as I know isn't it a legal requirement that you can't do anything against their best interests?
But there's usually a way to spin virtually anything that management want to do as being in the shareholders' best interest. The issue is that shareholders have a very large range of interests, many of which will be directly divergent from one another, and there's a need to have many different strategies over many spans of time.
In practice, the fiduciary responsibility regulations only really have real bite in limited circumstances where the actions of management may verge on the fraudulent (e.g., selling substantial parts of the company for much less than their fair value to another company owned by the CEO; whether or not that's technically fraud, it's still seen as clearly wrong). Most of the time, so long as management are trying to do the best for the company as they see it, they're not on the hook for fiduciary responsibility violation.
If you want to identify real problems, point your finger at investment firms that just want a fast return on their money and care nothing for the success of the businesses that they invest in. All they do is try to force everyone else to act like as big a corporate psychopath as they are. (This is why businesses run by their founding entrepreneurs often do better: they don't just focus on boosting their share price or returning dividends over the next 3 months, but instead actually build the business.)
Re:Can someone explain how multinationals work? (Score:5, Informative)
The unfortunate fact is that tax laws are fucking complex, and contain loopholes smart people can find and exploit.
And why are there loopholes? Look into it, and you'll find that it's basically a massive patchwork of hacks to maintain favourable exemptions for certain industries that are politically important/give politicians a lot of money. The tax system could be massively simplified to eliminate those loopholes, but it's in nobody who counts' interest to do so - companies would pay more tax, politicians wouldn't be able to manipulate the system to scratch the back of companies' "lobbying" them, and individuals, well, since when have they counted anyway?
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Tax regulations are complicated for the exact same reason that code gets complicated over time. It starts out simple and then people find bugs and exploits that need to be fixed. What you end up with is lots of targeted fixes in response to specific problems with the initial version.
That's true. But what the politicians consider a bug (e.g. "the corn lobby gave me lots of money in campaign contributions and are still paying lots of tax") everyone else considers a feature.
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--
If you consider an idiot someone who ignores ACs for some reason, you're an idiot.
One trick is through sales (Score:5, Insightful)
Ireland and say Spain have radically different tax rates over profits over a sale. So... what can you do if you are devoid of all morals?
Say the product in Spain sells for 100 dollars but really costs 10 to produce in China. Then Ireland buys it from China for 10 and sells it to Spain for 99.99. The sale in Spain then to the consumer is for 100, giving the Spain division a 1 cent profit.
Of course, since you are making so little money in Spain, you do claim all the subsidies and tax breaks you can to support your struggling business.
The fact is that our society is run on the principle that everyone is nice, that everyone is going to try their best to live together and play well with each other. The order keepers can NEVER check everyone doesn't speed, doesn't run red lights, gives the right of way. AND we NEED that, just imagine HOW hard it would be to travel anywhere if you couldn't at least somewhat count of right of way, people stopping for signs and keeping a similar speed. Remember that those who hate the speed limit ONLY talk about the MAX speed limit, the speeders NEVER complain about SLOW vehicles being banned from certain roads. No speed limits means you can drive ANYTHING ANYWHERE.
It is the same with taxes, it would be un-workable to check everybody, so the system relies on most people paying their tax neatly.
Evil people/Republicans often claim the rich pay the majority of the tax burden... apart that from the fact it ain't as a big a burden if you are rich, that is only logical, those who have the majority of the money, pay the majority of the taxes. The hidden lie (you know it is a lie because a Republican said it) is that the rich SHOULD be paying FAR more. But countless loopholes make the likes of Romney have a taxrate of 11%. No wonder he wants to see a birth certificate but does not want to show his tax records. If the rich payed their due share (who benefits more from police patrols, the rich guy with police guard or the poor guy living in a police no-go area) there would be far more tax-revenue AND then EVERYONES taxes could come down. If one rich guy avoids paying 1 million, that is a LOT of minimum wage workers who have to make up the difference because no Republican tax avoider would think of spending less on the army.
Tax avoidance is a gigantic business, the economy of Ireland practically runs on it. And that is the huge problem, there is ALWAYS someone who benefits when society is harmed.
The funny thing is that any call for chance will get you millions of piss-poor Republicans living on benefits saying you shouldn't tax the rich! Willing slaves. Because one day YOU may own a slave, you defend your own slavery. The American Dream, the ultimate brainwash.
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I think that's only telling part of the story, and the wrong part, at it.
If all those companies were doing was setting up most of their profit areas in low tax countries, I, personally, would find that legitimate. Ireland has low taxes, so Google, Microsoft, Facebook and many others have huge development centers there. That's just called a "tax plan", and is legitimate.
The point at which, IMHO, this crosses the line is where all of those companies want to show profits for their publicly traded, US based, pa
Re:One trick is through sales (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't find claiming 90+% of the profit from ireland as legit if 0% of the work involved was done there.
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Do you believe that intellectual property has value? If I produce a product that would sell for $5 without branding, but with my valuable brand, it sells instead for $10, wouldn't that imply my brand alone (few employees, few government services) is responsible for $5 of that $10?
Is it immoral that the division of my company that produced the product only pays taxes on the $5 that they actually produced, and not the full $10? If I sold my brand to a separate company, with the agreement that we pay some fr
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Goog is a parent company that owns lots of subsidiaries around the world
When they report earnings it's the combined earnings from all the worldwide companies even if they can't bring the money back into the USA
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If that's the case why not require the US reported earnings to be limited to whatever that's taxable in the USA? So if you're going to count it in the USA you're either going to have to bring the money in to the USA, OR you could leave it in Ireland, but pay the tax as if you earned that the USA.
They might have to tweak this clause a bit too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/11/13/revealed-how-u-s-companies-can-repatriate-cash-tax-free/ [forbes.com]
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That's the part I don't understand. How do you get the American company to show profit, and yet claim that the taxes for those profits need to be paid in Ireland. That's the part I suspect is breaking some laws.
Ah, but they're not. They're not moving the money to the parent company, they're saying we own 100% of an Irish company that last year made profits in Ireland. It is the consolidated financial statement people are looking at, which in short means "pretend all our holdings were the same entity", it is not for tax purposes but a mere aggregation for telling the market how you did in total across all countries and sub-sub-subsidiaries. It's not actual financial transactions, it is mere aggregation.
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Why can corporations move money around so easily to make more money or cut costs but why can't we move books and music around to do the same?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/first-sale-under-siege-if-you-bought-it-you-should-own-it [eff.org]
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They don’t. Ireland’s (and generally speaking European) profits wind up in Ireland. When Ireland’s profits are repatriated to the US then it’s taxed a second time at the US tax rate (less any foreign tax credit.)
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Say the product in Spain sells for 100 dollars but really costs 10 to produce in China. Then Ireland buys it from China for 10 and sells it to Spain for 99.99. The sale in Spain then to the consumer is for 100, giving the Spain division a 1 cent profit.
So you're saying that the only moral course of action is to find the area that has the highest tax rate, the least subsidies and support, and operate entirely out of there, so as to pay the maximum tax you possibly can.
Because everything else is tax avoidance and therefore immoral?
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Where does a sale occur when it's made over the internet for a non-tangible item? The place the customer is located in? The place the server is located in? The place the business operating the service is located in?
And are you saying Google doesn't operate in Ireland?
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There is another explanation for your apparent dichotomy, but I believe your vitriol for "Evil people/Republicans" is blinding you to it.
You defined the problem: The cost of doing business in Ireland and China is far cheaper than Spain (and the US and other places). There are two solutions to that, although you only see the one of going after Ireland and the people who do business across borders. You could try to make it cheaper to do business in Spain. You can't magically lower the cost of commodities and
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Want to make this entire discussion go away? Then eliminate the corporate tax altogether and treat capital gains the same as ordinary income (ie, wages and salary).
At one stroke, this would make the whiners on all sides STFU. Both the Occupy people, and the CEO's would no longer be able to complain. The offshore accounting tricks would collapse, revenue would skyrocket, and companies would move back into the USA.
That's what nobody in the political right has pushed yet, even though it was a major component o
Re:One trick is through sales (Score:4, Insightful)
11% would be a decent tax, especially on a guy making millions. Romney's, like mine, was actually closer to 14%; which means about $7,000 for me, millions and millions for him. What's your moral justification for making either one of us pay a higher percentage than the other? Don't envy his stuff, man. Don't vote based on envy, which is simply self-justified greed.
You are focused too much on the absolute value of the dollars. The moral justification is that beyond a certain number those millions of dollars have less value than your $50,000. In other words basic necessities take up a far larger percentage of your income than Romney's. The additional tax revenue from people like Romney helps pay for the social costs of company's like his that force other companies to pay their workers substandard wages and benefits and thus turn to the government for help in order to increase profit margins to give people like Romney even more money. Do you see how this cycle works? If companies paid their employees a more reasonable wage, a so-called living wage, I could see the case for lowering taxes.
As for the rest of your post, competing on taxes is a downward spiral that leaves governments unable to take care of their people in order to export wealth out of the country. A certain amount of tax competition help keep things lean but it's better to compete on things like education and infrastructure that hard to replicate. The reason tax competition is so popular is that it just takes some paper shuffling rather than real investments in a country's future.
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The moral justification is that beyond a certain number those millions of dollars have less value than your $50,000.
I don't think that in itself is a moral justification. The real moral justification is probably "taking something of little relative value from one group to help another group where it has a higher relative value is good" or something along those lines. Of course nobody who says that really believes it.. the amount of goodness in that act mysteriously vanishes when people point out that they themselves are pretty darn well off compared to some other group! Even if you're one of the working poor posting on S
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As a general rule it's not 'one company', but many and varying forms of companies in many countries depending on the forms of incorporation that are available in each country. Most countries have variants that can be owned and controlled by outside entities, which is why the local ones don't go around doing their own thing.
This of course creates all sorts of ways to move money around to the place in which profits are best taken, as they can usually make internal sales for imaginary numbers to their subsidia
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Precise laws ar going to vary by jurisdiction and also by the constitutional documents of the specific subsidiary company but broadly speaking...
The company is owned by its shareholders. In the situation we're talking about this probably means that 100% (or at least sufficient to exercise majority voting rights) belong to the parent company.
The shareholders appoint, and can remove and replace, a board of Directors. The Directors have rsponsibility and control over the company. They also have obligations und
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Google's European base is registered in Ireland, not the UK. Google Inc owns 100% of the shares in Google Ireland, so can appoint the directors and vote them out if they don't do what the parent corp wants them to do.
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Most MNCs are one company from a management control perspective, even though their subsidiary companies in different countries are different legal entities subject to many different laws and regulations. As usual, it all comes down to money, if the parent company put up the cash to create or buy the subsidiary, and they own a controlling interest in the share capital, then they call the shots.
In theory, the legal local head of google UK could quite legally, under UK law, decide to tell his US bosses to tak
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well, ownership of that independent company for one..
it's all controlled by the same people.
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OK, let's do this:
Fred Smith works for Foo UK Ltd. He's running their whole Foozle operation on a day-to-day basis, most Foo workers in the UK think of Fred as the "big boss" but he's just an employee like them.
Fred reports to Amy, Bob and Chris who are the Directors of the company. Some of the directors could also be employees, but in this case they're not, regardless they are responsible for the "big picture" of the company. The directors are legally responsible in some senses for the company, for example
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It's basically the same as how it is done within one company.
Usually, there will be a parent holding company that does nothing except own subsidiaries, which are the trading companies.
The holding company owns the shares in the subsidiary therefore controls all shareholding voting therefore controls appointment of directors therefore controls the board and therefore controls everything below the board. It is also common for the holding company to appoint a director(s) who comes from the holding company for d
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How does the holding company own the shares of the foreign company, if the holding company does not exist in the foreign country?
Google US does not exist in the UK, Google UK does, so how can Google US (which does not exist,which is why Google UK exists) hold shares of Google UK?
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Google Holdings US does exist in the eyes of the UK. A corporation is an artificial person, the place it is registered is pretty much the same as the place you got your birth certificate. You do not have to be a UK citizen to be recognised as the rightful owner of property.
It is not necessary for Google to have a UK subsidiary, Google could operate within the UK. They will have created the UK subsidiary because they want to - it simply makes a lot of sense for quite practical reasons. If you operate in mult
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It's not usual
yeah, new industry (Score:2)
Please change industries and move to real estate completely. While you are at it, do not send banks to the internet - we love our hysterical authentication on their sites.
Thanks!
So are they going to pay like everyone else? (Score:1)
So are they now going to pay their god damn corporation tax like everyone else?
Likely tax motivated (Score:1)
Sure, it's likely it was tax motivated.
But let's not overlook that value after construction: £1 billion ($1.6 billion) - value invested: £650 million ($1.04 billion) = £ ka-ching ($ ka-ching).
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Depends. The price of construction was £1 billion - but the price of the land wasn't mentioned, and that's a decent chunk of some pretty expensive real estate.
$1 billion will buy you some excellent tax lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll personally pick up that $1 billion wherever you want, and hand it back to personally wherever you want it. All perfectly legal. Oh, they will want a small "taste" of that $1 billion. Hell, they'll take it to the Moon or Mars for you. The first manned colonies there will be tax shelters.
Or they could mint some $1 billion platinum coins, and take them in their pockets on flights from London to San Francisco.
Evading taxes, is never a problem for big corporations. Now that they are investing $1 billion in the property in London, the rent rates in that neighborhood will surely skyrocket. Who owns, or partially owns, the real estate in the area . . . maybe Google, as well . . . ?
Buy up some cheap real estate in a distressed area, and then build something big there. The cheap real estate suddenly becomes quite valuable. A nice business plan . . .
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Buy up some cheap real estate in a distressed area, and then build something big there. The cheap real estate suddenly becomes quite valuable. A nice business plan . . .
The King's Cross area is not remotely distressed. It's been undergoing a revitalization project for pretty much a decade right now. The restored St Pancras station there ranks among the nicest buildings in London (and that's saying something).
So if Google would be a bit late to the party if this was their plan. But it's a great location. Central, on seven subway lines, and a 45 minute direct train to Cambridge.
Good strategic spot, I'd say.
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And then there are the domestic rail services.
Kings cross serves the east cost main line to cambridge leeds, york etc. Services to cambridge also branch off from that line
St pancras serves kent via high speed one and also serves brighton via thameslink
Euston just down the road serves the west coast mainline to birmingham, manchester etc
All three of these stations also have various local connections.
Between many tube services to different parts of london, eurostar services to the continent and domestic train
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Misleading Title (Score:1)
Not for the tax (Score:1)
Google will have to leave the US if it wants to keep hold of the rest of the world. The fact that they are obliged to comply with PATRIOT in the US means it's services are not legally acceptible in many countries, notably the EU.
Can't have that (Score:1)
Re:A new way to add new building to your city? (Score:5, Informative)
Except it's to avoid US tax they are doing this. Reuters article. [reuters.com]
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Well indeed there is more than one possible reason, although minimising tax liabilities will no doubt something Google takes into account. Hefty taxes on moving money around in one of the financial capitals of the world is a rather unlikely one.
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Wait, if a corporation brings millions or billions it earned outside the US, in some other country under some other laws, back into the US, most of which it invests,the government just seizes some?
Well, fuck us. We deserve to die.
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I don't think slashdot deletes posts. I've had it happen a few times, that my posts don't show up. I've always blamed some other thing - my browser, or the internet, or something. Maybe the stars are just improperly aligned, I don't know. But I do know that a lot of worthless shit and shinola appear on slashdot, that would be deleted ANYWHERE ELSE. Slashdot just leaves it up there, to be viewed by people like myself, who don't mask any posts.
Check your settings, and if they are all correct, then blame
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"my first windows was 3.11"
Geez, Louise, would you just get off the lawn? If you didn't diddle around with Windows 1 point anything, installed on an ancient DOS like 3.1, then you ain't done nothin'. (Oh yeah, Win1 would install onto any DOS - I had it on DRDOS and TRSDOS, both! None of that "Checking, checking, oops, we're not on MSDOS, crash and burn!"
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