Posted on 03/01/2015 12:46:57 PM PST by Olog-hai
Fast-food giant McDonalds has avoided paying 1 billion in tax across the EU, and should be included in the EUs probe on sweetheart tax deals, according to a report published Wednesday (25 February).
The report, published by the European Federation of Public Service Unions, its US Counterpart and the charity War on Want, accuses McDonalds of aggressive and potentially abusive optimization of its structure which has led to the avoidance of significant amounts of tax across the continent. It concludes that it is likely that the company reached a secret tax deal with Luxembourg.
In July 2009, the Happy-Meal maker restructured its business by moving its headquarters from London to the Swiss city Geneva. It also created McD Europe Franchising Sàrl, a Luxembourg-resident intellectual property holding company with a Swiss branch, after the Grand Duchy introduced a tax policy change allowing companies to benefit from significant reductions to their tax rate on income earned from intellectual property. Luxembourgs intellectual property box rule reduces the normal corporate tax rate on most royalties from 29.2 percent to 5.8 percent of taxable income.
(Excerpt) Read more at euobserver.com ...
finding the lowest tax rate is not illegal
To a Liberal’s Communist mind it is.
So “avoiding” taxes is now illegal?
Not here, no. But the EUSSR likes to equate tax avoidance with tax evasion, because their central government is greedy for revenue to keep their own sweetheart no-work government jobs going.
The EU equates it with tax evasion. They think they own the whole continent, after all. They hate what they call “tax havens”. When Jose Manuel Barroso called the EU an “empire”, he was in earnest, although duplicitous in his overall description.
They legally structured themselves to reduce their tax burden. They didn’t write the tax laws. They complied with the tax laws. The restructuring was within the law.
It’s ridiculous. Why follow the law? Seriously.
Not just the EU. Our own govt feels that way too.
That's exactly what the liberals scream about here...loop holes, which, of course, are perfectly legal and were set up for a particular reason...opposing minimum wage laws which deprive the least of our citizens to get entry level jobs...right to work laws which allow people to hire others and negotiate pay schedules according to the needs of both the employee and employer.......PATHETIC
We need a War on Gibmedats “Wog”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.