More on Tesco Tax Avoidance

The game's up then. There's no getting out of it now. Tesco's collapse is imminent.

You bet on Tesco's collapse .. personally I'd bet on the other party being the first to go under. 8>.

(p.s. Dave Davies for president!)

Of course it is. Except that it's everyone that shops there will be paying their increased tax bill.

Yep - and the rest of the tax payers who don't shop there won't be contributing that £50m to Tesco profits as it will go to reducing the rest of the general tax burden instead.

As I said : excellent news

No problem for me then, have been avoiding the place for years.

There's nothing excellent about company taxation it's individuals that want and need what Government supplies (well some of it) so they should pay.

Companies don't get votes so are easy targets for lazy and incompetent (and usually ideologically driven) politicians who like to give the electorate what they want to hear i.e. something for nothing.

Of course really, company taxation is just one big f**king own goal.

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 at 10:34:48, Roger wrote in uk.legal :

Except that if they try to hike prices to cover it, they risk losing custom to other supermarkets.

"Paul Hyett" wrote

Not if those other supermarkets realise that they don't need to discount so heavily to undercut Tesco's, and they put their prices up too!

President of what?

Haltemprice & Howden, presumably, not that they won't be pissed off with having to turn out for no good reason. It's a rural constituency in East Yorkshire and not used to being used as a political football. Alan B'Stard's constituency was called Haltemprice. No connection, obviously. Complete waste of time, and a measure of nothing in particular. Foolish beyond belief.

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 at 19:52:47, Tim wrote in uk.legal :

Then get busted for running a cartel?

Hmmm. The above is wrong -- I wrote it in uk.finance!

"Paul Hyett" wrote

Do you even know what constitutes a cartel?

If you looked carefully at what I said, you'd notice that I'm talking about the other supermarkets putting up their prices *afterwards*, as a result of noticing Tesco putting up theirs. That isn't a cartel, where prices would be decided *beforehand* by the members of the cartel.

It is perfectly legal for companies to *react* to the market!

Taken to its logical conclusion then I would have to start paying tobacco duty which I currently avoid by not smoking!

As the price of goods in Tesco is determined by what the competition charges, either (a) all the shops in the street are running this scam, or (b) the saving is going into the pockets of Tesco shareholders and makes no difference to the price in the shop.

As the press have singled out only Tesco in this, I would guess that the answer isn't (a), BICBW

tim

Yes, that's Labour's plan, to reduce everyone else's tax bill.

Not really. The tax system is intended to encourage you not to smoke, it isn't intended to encourage you to fund your supermarket buildings via offshore finance vehicles.

Asda is American, Iceland and Somerfield are Icelandic. They can decide how much of their activities take place in the UK, and I expect the answer will be as little as possible. It wouldn't surprise me if Sainsburys and Morrisons do the same as Tesco.

The other big difference is that Tesco, unlike Sainsbury's and Morrisons, actually has a significant number of stores outside the UK and thus is a genuine multinational. So they have a head start on the others when it comes to moving admin and financial operations outside the UK as well.

Mark

Is there any evidence that they originnally passed any savings due to these schemes on to the customer? I would imagine shareholders would be the main beneficiary.