A whistle, blown

A certain corporation has been actively avoiding British taxes:

A FORMER Google executive has blown the whistle on a massive and “immoral” tax avoidance scheme that has “cheated” British taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade.

Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and 2006, has lifted the lid on an elaborate structure which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven.

Although Google’s London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, deals were technically booked through its Dublin office to minimise its liabilities here. Jones, a devout Christian and father of four, is ready to hand over a cache of more than 100,000 emails and documents to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), detailing the “concocted scheme”. 

My father was sentenced for twelve years of prison for a similar
avoidance scheme that amounted to $2 million.  Granted, that was in the USA and not the UK, but I tend to doubt that Google only used this sort of scheme to divert British profits. I wonder how much prison
time the influential and politically connected Google executives will
see?  About as much as John Corzine saw for failing to return hundreds of millions of dollars on deposit with MF Global to its depositors, I expect. 

Some versions of this sort of structure are perfectly legal, of course.  If the sales staff had been in Dublin and the cash paid into Ireland, there wouldn’t be an issue; the business would be legitimately Irish.  But the more influential corporations become, the more they expect to be permitted to not have to bother with petty matters such as sovereign nations and national law when it doesn’t suit them to do so.

This should suffice to demonstrate that corporatism is manifestly not capitalism, and moreover, that it is intrinsically hostile to national interests.  Never forget that corporations are artificial creations of the State.