UKC

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/13/cathedrals-offer-zero-hours-con...

...and meanwhile in other news, the Pope is discovered to be a Catholic, and bears are confirmed as enjoying arboraceous settings for their defecatory habits...

In reply to Olaf Prot:

See https://twitter.com/kayaburgess/status/1040535012033093632   for rather more hypocrisy (or, possibly, lack of awareness).

In reply to Olaf Prot:

Alistair Cambell famously said "we don't do God". Archbishop's of Canterbury would do well to follow that idea and "not do politics".

In reply to pec: Personally, I think anybody drawing attention to society's ills and framing them as bad things in the public sphere, is a good thing. It could be part of a plan to try and change Amazon's practices, or to withdraw the his church's stake in the company which could send a message. 

In reply to Timmd:

Since you mention that, it's worth pointing out that the Archbishop's hypocrisy is as nothing next to that of Amazon's big cheese:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/14/jeff-bezos-low-income...

 

 

In reply to Timmd:

On the tax issue, I think it's unhelpful to frame it as a moral issue for amazon to respond to. It's a corporation, it responds to money and maybe punishment, not moral obligations. 

Better rules are needed to make sure that we collect taxes on money made in our country thanks to our infrastructure. Of course, this isn't straightforward, but as a species we have unravelled the history of the cosmos, doubled our life expectancy, and used quantum mechanics to revolutionise the world with the digital revolution...is it *honestly* beyond the wit of man?

I would definitely expect the church to be concerned with politics. If it claims to know anything about morality, then how could it not be concerned with policies that decide whether and how we help people who are vulnerable, how we punish crime, etc? Personally I think that religion is a total red herring in discussions of morality, so while I expect that the church should want to comment on politics, there are no good reasons to listen. 

In reply to Olaf Prot:

It doesn't imply he is a hypocrite (at least in this instance) but it does imply a lack of control over what his church does.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

It seems to me that taxes are seen by many/most as a moral issue, with those on the right finding it unfair/immoral that the government should seek to take more than X amount, and those further to the left seeing it as unfair/immoral if companies/people pay less than X amount (to generalise hugely). If companies respond to law, and governments shape the law, and also respond to public mood. If by him raising the issue, it starts to appear to those in power that there is a public desire for big corporations to pay more taxes, it seems to be that there already is, then him raising it as a moral issues seems like a good thing to do, to me. People might chose not to listen, and that is fair enough. 

In reply to Jon Stewart: I think we would be in agreement about the amount of influence religions should have on public life/life for anybody who doesn't follow the same religion, but anything which makes companies like Amazon behave more fairly has probably got to be a good thing. 

 

In reply to Timmd:

Render unto Ceasar...

Tongue firmly in cheek here btw. It is either hypocritical or at least woefully uninformed to attack a company that your organisation invests in. He, or his advisors (and if he doesn't have any he should have) should not have tripped up this badly. It is plain embarrassing.

In reply to Timmd:

Absolutely. As I say, policy is all about morality.

Companies respond to law - but the law doesn't make them pay tax. Yes, they might respond to public mood, i.e. they can work out the cheapest way they can neutralise the public perception of them being leeching, piss-taking c unts, and we can get some totally tokenistic sum that Amazon have decided works best for them.

We want their money, so we can pay for public services (which they have used to make their money) and we want it through a system that works. Tax should not be anything to do with psychological manipulation - there should be a law that says how much you owe, and then you pay it.

The aim is to get money out of Amazon into HMT. By framing it as a moral issue, he's just distracting from the actual work that needs doing: re-writing the tax rules so they work. The moral obligation is on the government, not on Amazon, and the longer we blame Amazon, the longer they won't have to pay a penny.

 

In reply to Jon Stewart:

 

What does make companies pay tax, if it isn't it being illegal not to - ie it being law based? You've confused me. It would seem to be entirely law based I'd have thought, one could call them regulations, but it's still illegal not to follow them minimally.

In reply to Timmd:

I just mean that there is a level of tax on profits made in the UK that we, democratically, believe is about right (say 20%), and the law does not make companies pay this tax if they don't want to. We leave it up to them to decide if they'd like to use legal tax avoidance measures to pay almost nothing, or whether they feel that they have some kind of moral duty to cough up more than that neglible amount in order to save reputational damage.

I'm saying that the law should say "you owe 20% of your profits made in the UK", define correctly what "made in the UK" means in a way that can be enforced, and then HMRC should collect the f*cking tax. I know it's terribly, terribly difficult, but I'm unconvinced that those who say it's impossible understand how difficult it was for physicists to develop the theory of quantum electrodynamics. I just don't believe that it's as hard to come up with these rules as it's made out.

There is always the argument that if we collected tax effectively, then we'd lose the jobs as the companies moved elsewhere. So be it. The work that's being done in the UK is here because it needs to be here, i.e. goods and services are being sold in this country. If we want those goods, then when Amazon and Starbucks f*ck right off because they don't want to pay any tax, then someone else who does can very easily take advantage of the gap in the market left behind.

The idea that the UK needs to capitulate to these business' demands not to pay any tax, when they take labour from our educated labour market, and ship their products up and down the country on our roads, etc etc, is insulting. The law should be simple: pay your way or f*ck off.

In reply to Jon Stewart: Yes, I entirely agree. It should definitely be possible for us to work out a tax system with less loopholes. Reading Private Eye leaves me with the lingering sense that there's vested interests behind the opaque/fungible tax system we have. Not in a conspiracy theory sense, just in greed and similar having the predictable effects - the grubbier side of human nature.. 

Edit: I was cheery enough before I posted this. Oh well. It's Sunday and nice things are planned. 

In reply to Jon Stewart:

If you are going to inveigh against HMRC or successive governments for failing to respond to a rapidly changing international business environment, here's a link you should read. Very interesting if you like that sort of thing. And, more to the point, it demonstrates that effective action was taken several years ago.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

This is the so-called Google Tax which has already had a significant impact on large multinationals and, it's pleasing to note, without deterring the likes of Facebook from increasing its presence in the UK.

No doubt it has taken a groundswell of public opinion to motivate the authorities into action. However, these matters, on detailed investigation, turn out to be less simple than you'd want them to be. Did you know, for example, that Amazon doesn't actually make significant profits (relative to its turnover and success)? And for the very best reasons. A high proportion of its revenues are re-invested in further growth instead of released to profit and its shareholders. That's a rather virtuous business practice, is it not? But small profit means very little Corporation Tax is generated, so the whole debate becomes moot.

I wish Amazon would treat its employees better and no amount of philanthropy from Jeff Bezos could convince me of his moral position until he changes employment practices. Indeed I'm more concerned that he should address that issue than agitating for him to stop investing in and growing Amazon in order to pay more tax. The direct impact of his choices on half a million (and rapidly growing) employees strikes me as more significant.