Crickhowell: Welsh town moves 'offshore' to avoid tax on local business

[bananas]

Source: The Independent

The Powys tax rebellion, led by traders including the town’s salmon smokery, local coffee shop, book shop, optician and bakery, could spread nationwide

When independent traders in a small Welsh town discovered the loopholes used by multinational giants to avoid paying UK tax, they didn’t just get mad.

Now local businesses in Crickhowell are turning the tables on the likes of Google and Starbucks by employing the same accountancy practices used by the world’s biggest companies, to move their entire town “offshore”.

Advised by experts and followed by a BBC crew, family-run shops in the Brecon Beacons town have submitted their own DIY tax plan to HMRC, copying the offshore arrangements used by global brands which pay little or no corporation tax.

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Read more: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/crickhowell-traders-take-town-offshore-10424580

[bananas]

1. Crickhowell traders to take their town offshore in effort to avoid paying tax

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/crickhowell-traders-take-town-offshore-10424580

Crickhowell traders to take their town offshore in effort to avoid paying tax

21:00, 10 Nov 2015
Updated 21:05, 10 Nov 2015
By Aled Blake

Business people are joining forces to use the same accountancy loopholes used by huge multinationals as part of a BBC experiment

They have just secured their high street’s status as a haven for independent businesses.

Now campaigning traders in the picturesque Brecon Beacons town of Crickhowell are setting their sights on their next targets – some of the world’s largest companies who avoid paying tax in the UK .

Business people are joining forces to use the same controversial accountancy loopholes used by huge multinationals to move their town offshore.

The alliance of shopkeepers and traders in the Powys town sees them uncover the techniques multinationals employ to avoid paying tax and try to apply them to their very own DIY tax plan, as part of a BBC documentary to be broadcast next year.

<snip>

[JDPriestly]

2. Instead of the TPP, we need a global agreement on how corporations should pay

their taxes. They can't all incorporate in Ireland.

At the state level, we should change our corporate codes to require corporations that do business in the US and our specific states to subject themselves to our tax codes. But we might have to abandon some of our trade agreements to do that.

Might be good to abandon those trade agreements anyway because we are a debtor nation when it comes to trade. And contrary to what the free traders will tell you, those trade deficits do count. They make our real estate and our assets cheap to the wealthy from other countries who have no interest in our economy other than to grab our real estate and assets.

Our current trade policy is idiotic, just idiotic. It benefits international and foreign corporations, not American citizens.

[stuffmatters]

4. Completely agree. And our trade deficits (unlike Repub obsession national deficit) =s jobs deficit

[imthevicar]

3. LOL!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. I expected to see they'd dug a moat around the town.

[Chan790]

6. I have a crazy RW cousin who wants Florida to secede.

Part of his plan involves digging a canal from the Aucilla River to the Saint Mary's River, thus severing most of Florida off the mainland...then claiming it was always really an island.

I never underestimate the limits of absurdity people will undertake.

Their tax-haven idea OTOH is funny and brilliant.

[tavernier]

9. The Keys did secede officially.

We celebrate it every year.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. That requires a saw....

[druidity33]

7. It's a beautiful area...

i went to school near there. As i understand it, they started this in order to save the town pub from being turned into a supermarket. The BBC will be doing a documentary according to the article. It was nice to check out a Welsh newspaper again... thanks for the story and link!

K&R

[T_i_B]

12. The usual thing for saving pubs....

...is to get them listed as an Asset Of Community Value. Essentially this buys you time. It's the thing we in the Campaign For Reat Ale do to keep greedy property developers off pubs. Indeed my own branch is looking at this for one particular pub in my local area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_of_community_value
http://www.camra.org.uk/list-your-local

The Roscoe Head in Liverpool is a particularly high profile case in point. I was in there just a few weeks ago as it happens!
https://www.change.org/p/liverpool-city-council-save-the-roscoe-head
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/real-ale-supporters-flock-across-10042299

[tavernier]

8. Reminds nds me of the Hugh Grant film,

The Englisman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.

The Welsh are clever folk. 😄

[DavidDvorkin]

11. Now the loopholes will be closed, but not for the big guys.