The old badger game

01 Mar 2017

MPs have accused Caffe Nero of gaming the system after it emerged that the company did not pay a penny of corporation tax last year, despite making a profit of £25.5m.  This is the same company that stopped buying milk from West country suppliers when the Animal Rights terrorists threatened them, so don’t expect high principles.

The company avoided a £5.1m tax bill after claiming its holding company made a £24m loss. Charlie Elphicke, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “It is unacceptable that large companies take money from British customers and do not contribute to the cost of public services.”

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail claims that B&M Bargains is a serial user of tax havens. The discount retailer has paid £152.6m in dividends to a holding company in Luxembourg over the past three years. A spokesman said B&M was based in Luxembourg because of its pan-European operations.  He may have meant that they were dodging tax by taking advantage of the tax avoidance system introduced by former Luxembourg Prime Minister Junkers, the guy who sent Cameron into the Brexit Referendum without any meaningful concessions. 

A country based on wilful tax avoidance is one way of making a living without contributing and the other is for the UK subsidiary of a US company to simply to make alleged losses while buckling to terrorist demands.  Is this really mainstream business?