Posted on 10/28/2007 3:13:39 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Big Paychecks for U2 Millionaires
Oct. 26, 2007
The Associated Press
U2 Ltd., the Irish band's music publishing company, raked in $30 million-plus last year and $25.8 million of it went to five unidentified "employees," according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
Those "employees" are suspected to be the band members and their longtime manager, Paul McGuinness. But U2's public relations firms in Dublin and London refused to confirm that.
While Bono has won accolades worldwide for raising awareness of Third World poverty, he has been criticized for moving U2's corporate offices out of Ireland to avoid paying taxes. The U2 Ltd. documents show the band moved its corporate base last year from Ireland to the Netherlands, where royalties on music incur virtually no tax.
The move, while perfectly legal, strikes a raw nerve in Ireland, whose wealthiest citizens often live as tax exiles in other European countries to avoid tax.
It's not known whether the globe-trotting Bono who owns a mansion overlooking Dublin Bay pays personal taxes in Ireland.
U2 Ltd.'s move to the Netherlands coincided with the appearance on its accounts, for the first time, of five "employees."
The documents, filed this week at the Irish Companies Registration Office in Dublin, record that the four band members Paul "Bono" Hewson, Dave "The Edge" Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen quit the U2 Ltd. board when the company relocated to Amsterdam in June 2006.
The documents offered no breakdown of pay to the five. Previous years' U2 Ltd. accounts, produced when the U2 members were still company directors, listed employee salaries as zero.
U2 Ltd. said it paid nearly $1.1 million in 2006 tax to Ireland, compared to just $46,500 in 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at music.msn.com ...
I resent their hyprocrisy when they preach to U.S. politicians to send more American tax dollars to help the U.N. and other goofy world projects yet U2 does all it can to evade paying taxes in Ireland...
I'm SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell ya.
John Edward can join this group. He paid himself as a lawyer with dividends (or some such thing) to avoid being taxed on his income as ordinary income.
Will Bill and Hillary release their tax returns? Expect similar games with them.
“I don’t believe in riches but you should see how I live.”
U2's Bono avoids taxes (August, 2006)
What would Bono do? Probably dodge taxes (September, 2006)
Bono, Who Preaches Charity, Profits From Buyouts, Tax Breaks (January, 2007)
Looks like bonehead bono has finally found what he's looking for.
No wonder no matter what “good” Bono does, he still seems like a huge piece of crap. :)
Taxes are for “the little people” — not the annointed ones who are here to tell us how we should live.
Attention tax paying pigeons -
http://www.taxjustice-usa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=204
They love to spend other people's money on "charity" - so long as it isn't their money.
They are NIMBY's (not in my neighborhood) to the nth degree. Just try going to a limousine liberal suburb and propose a subsidized housing project, a jail or a homeless shelter.
Bill and Hillary will have to tell how they got their drug money. LOL
I’ll give you another example of the total hypocrisy. John BonJovi lives up on hill in a huge riverfront mansion in NJ in a neighborhood where all the houses along the river are mansions. He has a farmers tax exemption on the property which cuts a good portion of his property taxes. What does he “farm”? A few bee hives in the remote section of the property.
Although Bono has declined to comment on the move, the band's lead guitarist, David "the Edge" Evans, said, "Of course we're trying to be tax-efficient. Who doesn't want to be tax-efficient?'"
Writing in the Observer, Nick Cohen noted that Evans "sounded as edgy as a plump accountant in the 19th hole."
http://www.slate.com/id/2152580/
There is nothing immoral about arranging your affairs so as to legally minimize the taxes you pay. It is just nothing but hypocritical of high earning entertainers to trot around the world telling the rest of us how much more in taxes we should be paying.
It should be pointed out that the US and very few other countries tax income of their citizens worldwide. In other words, if a US citizen were to earn money by playing the guitar on a Panamanian cruise ship flying the Liberian flag, owned by a Chinese company in international waters to a crowd of Japanese fans who throw yen at him, he is obligated to report and pay taxes to the US government on that specific income. I fully realize that (for the time being), Congress in its kindness and wisdom, grants some exemptions and deductions to non-US income, but the fact remains it must be fully reported in order to qualify for those reductions.
Other countries only tax income earned by their citizens when they are in the country. Otherwise, they only have to pay any taxes that might be due where they earn their money.
Putting aside Bono’s hypocrisy, the universal taxation suffered by US citizens (living in the “land of the free”) is another reason I support the Fair Tax. Under that tax plan, were Bono spent his money, he would pay the tax. There would be no exemptions or tax shelters.
Absolutely, one of the best SP’s ever. I shall sarcastically use Courics as a unit of measure for the rest of my days.
Its easy to be a philandrophist with other people’s money.
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