The issue which was raised was the reputation of the charity, not the cost of the vouchers.
Bear in mind that WMF received £2M from Google in 2010 which falls within the period covered by the Public Accounts Committee report on Google published this summer:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/p...
The companys highly contrived tax arrangement has no purpose other than to enable the company to avoid UK corporation tax. Googles reputation has been damaged by these revelations of aggressive tax avoidance. That damage will not be repaired until the company arranges to pay its fair share of tax in the country where it earns the profits from the business it conducts."
So, the Wikimedia movement in general, through this donation to the WMF can be seen as benefiting from Tax Avoidance.
Whilst I do not think WMUK's reputation is necessarily damaged by this historic situation, I do feel that it would be helpful if staff, trustees and members all had a certain sensitivity to this issue, as this still remains a matter for public concern.
all the best
Fabian User:Leutha
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2013 03:01:07 +0000 From: Michael Maggs Michael@maggs.name To: UK Wikimedia mailing list wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Amazon Tax avoidance Message-ID: D7C05583-4632-4A3B-A144-21804C9F2209@maggs.name Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
On 30 Nov 2013, at 22:01, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Actually, I despair of the entire thread. There is all of £20 at stake here. There is every reason to economise on staff time, on this scale. The waste of volunteer time and good will that has been generated is unconscionable. The object of the exercise has been completely forgotten. The objects of the charity hardly enter.
Charles
Absolutely. After 43 emails all we have learned that the mailing list is not a remotely efficient way of deciding how the charity should spend £20. The staff have plenty to go on, and they should be perfectly able to move ahead now without need for any further commentary.
I suggest that this thread should be treated as closed. Thank you for your comments everybody.
Michael
Wikimediauk-l mailing list Wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
End of Wikimediauk-l Digest, Vol 101, Issue 1
On 01/12/2013 13:00, fabian@unpopular.org.uk wrote:
The issue which was raised was the reputation of the charity, not the cost of the vouchers.
Bear in mind that WMF received £2M from Google in 2010 which falls within the period covered by the Public Accounts Committee report on Google published this summer:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/p...
The companys highly contrived tax arrangement has no purpose other than to enable the company to avoid UK corporation tax. Googles reputation has been damaged by these revelations of aggressive tax avoidance. That damage will not be repaired until the company arranges to pay its fair share of tax in the country where it earns the profits from the business it conducts."
So, the Wikimedia movement in general, through this donation to the WMF can be seen as benefiting from Tax Avoidance.
Tax avoidance isn't illegal. Companies and people are well within its rights to minimise their tax liability to the extent the law let them.
If you believe certain practise is unacceptable, then contact your MP and or petition the government to change the law to make it illegal (or run for parliament etc).
Tax avoidance certainly isn't *illegal*, but it is sometimes *immoral*, such as when a multinational pretends that it is conducting its business in a low-tax country while actually making most of its profits elsewhere. It robs the latter countries of revenue that its citizens are paying for. Companies who do that may be within their *legal *rights, but clearly are not within any definition of *moral *rights.
The problem with Katie's suggested solution is that it simply does not work. Governments have no track record at all of being able to fix these sort of problems.
What does work is consumer pressure and the consequences of bad publicity for companies who cheat us of their tax contributions. Every little bit of pressure helps, so let's keep on crowd-sourcing our concerns - although I do agree that we've probably exhausted this thread as a channel for these issues.
On 1 December 2013 21:12, rexx rexx@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
What does work is consumer pressure and the consequences of bad publicity for companies who cheat us of their tax contributions. Every little bit of pressure helps, so let's keep on crowd-sourcing our concerns - although I do agree that we've probably exhausted this thread as a channel for these issues.
No.
I'll save you time. The closest you have to an example is starbucks and even they didn't actually pay up.
Otherwise consumer pressure has had exactly zero effect.
In terms of what governments could actually do a significant chunk of tax havens are ultimately British. Cayman islands, Gibraltar, Channel islands, Isle of man, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bermuda. The parliament of the United kingdom has the ability to shut them down tomorrow (its not going to because the financial heavy lifting is traditionally done through the city of London but it has the legal power to do so).
Of the rest we are for the most part talking near micronations that could be trivially terminated by neighboring governments.
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