SHsharkbok
Captain23,205 posts
SHsharkbokCaptain23,205 posts
02 Feb 2021, 15:35#43
If someone can buy something from Amazon that is 10% cheaper than anywhere else, they will buy from Amazon.
Because Ireland allows Amazon to pay such low corporate tax, while other EU retailers have to pay 15% tax - EU online retailers are not price competitive. (Some EU states have a much higher per cent).
Top Shop and Debenhams have just gone bust... Amazon continues to expand, and the Irish take their small cut - at the expense of the EU.
While other EU countries are using overseas tax havens they are not shafting the rest of the EU for the sake of American companies. A fantastic partnership...
Join the EU they said, It would be a good way to compete against US companies they said.
STStavanger1
Pro4,532 posts
02 Feb 2021, 18:17#45
Shark seriously, the UK is in no position to complain about other countries evading taxes. Your defense is ahh sure we are not stealing from the EU we are just stealing from everywhere else in the world so its completely different. But even that logic is flawed as I'm sure plenty of the tax evasion that takes places in the UK has siphoned money out of EU states.
Leave the EU they said, we can have all the benefits of EU membership without any of the costs they said.
STStavanger1
Pro4,532 posts
02 Feb 2021, 18:44#47
It was was indeed hypocritical but the UK was threatening a hard border for months with its internal market bill and subsequently threatened to use article 16 just two weeks ago, the EU on the hand changed its track after it realized its error in around three hours. I'll point that Michel Barnier the EU's check negotiator in the Brexit talk was among the first to call the EU out on its error, it shouldn't have happened and I'm not defending it, but to say the EU is more hypocritical than the UK is just playing politics. As for de lays they all came from the UK side, with it refusing to lay out its positions and proposals to problems (usually because it hadn't any) going over the same ground time and again, refusing to ratifying the deal May got and then eventually voting for Johnson's worse deal.
Not all but a huge number of them have died due to the governments incompetence. Decisions like allowing the Liverpool Champions league match as well as Cheltenham to go ahead at the start of the pandemic, the refusal to close up its borders, its initial plan to opt for herd immunity, the delays in ramping up testing, the ending of its test and tracing program, the refusal to heed scientific advise on multiple occasions and lock down when they where advised to do so, doing so weeks later, its undermining of public health messaging with the Dominic Cummings affair, its mixed messaging, its promotion of eating out after the first lockdown. its slowness in sourcing and providing PPE, the prioritizing of opening pubs before schools, the outsourcing of test and tracing to companies with no experience in those particular fields but just happened to be friends and donors of the Tory party, its slowness in getting a contact tracing app up and running, and its focus on brexit in the midst of a pandemic when the EU would of been happy to park it for another year.
Absolutely there is factors outside of the governments control and lives would of been lost no matter how good the response is but it must be held responsible for a huge amount of UK's awful death rate and poor economic performance. Frankly I find putting on sort of the blame onto the hospitals as incredible distasteful. The NHS are miracle workers, and its possibly the best health service in the world. Quite possibly the reason the UK vaccine rollout has been so good is the NHS has been allowed to run it. Huge numbers across the world have caught covid in hospitals, its nothing unique to the UK and extremely difficult to stop happening.
As for copying Singapore, it probably didn't mean much to the average Brexit voter, but the likes of Nigel Farrago and many politicians who favored Brexit where keen on the idea. My point to Shark was it would be hypocritical for the UK to cite tax evasion of other EU's states as a reason to leave the EU when they do it on such a large scale themselves.
SHsharkbok
Captain23,205 posts
SHsharkbokCaptain23,205 posts
02 Feb 2021, 20:58#48
Ireland's bread and butter is a stealing corporate tax from the EU.
So because some individuals in the UK like Richard Branson are tax evaders, that justifies Ireland siphoning corporate tax from EU members. The whole idea of tax havens is just unethical, as a country is losing tax somehow and somewhere. Richard Branson tried to get UK government assistance using UK taxpayer money to bail his companies out during Covid, despite paying tax to some foreign country. He shafted the UK people and government.
Totally different than a government signing deals behind the EU members backs to undercut their tax.
The Irish government deal with American companies to undercut the EU member taxes allow US companies like Amazon to be more price-competitive than EU companies. So not only Ireland stealing EU tax, they are damaging the EU market.
The biggest absurdity of the EU was the membership of Ireland.
STStavanger1
Pro4,532 posts
04 Feb 2021, 18:40#55
The poor will benefit financially as the cost of combating climate change is less than the cost of inaction. They also benefit in other ways too...like for example oh say not dying from drought/famine, flooding and an increase of extreme weather conditions. Stuff the wealthy doesn't have to worry about. They can always just move to somewhere less effected, the poor doesn't have that option.
How does combating a man made environmental disaster lead to the end of democracy and lead to increased dictatorship, just doesn't make any logical sense.