The problem with corporate tax is that it's not a tax on a specific, quantifiable activity, like "income", "capital gain" or "sale". These are pretty difficult to fudge.
Rather, corporate tax is a tax on making a profit. Consider the battle between development and sales - who's making the profit? To the very untrained eye, sales, because they're the ones bring the cheques home, and, indeed, salaries and bonuses in that department seems to confirm that. But without a good product to sell, there would be no sales, so it's obvious that devs deserve a cut as well - but how much?
That's essentially the same discussion Mrs Hodge is trying to have with Starbucks. Are the profits generated by sales (the stores in the UK) or by devs and backoffice (marketing, branding, sourcing, supply chain, finance etc etc etc), conveniently, but legitimately, placed outside the UK?
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The problem with corporate tax is that it's not a tax on a specific, quantifiable activity, like "income", "capital gain" or "sale". These are pretty difficult to fudge.
Rather, corporate tax is a tax on making a profit. Consider the battle between development and sales - who's making the profit? To the very untrained eye, sales, because they're the ones bring the cheques home, and, indeed, salaries and bonuses in that department seems to confirm that. But without a good product to sell, there would be no sales, so it's obvious that devs deserve a cut as well - but how much?
That's essentially the same discussion Mrs Hodge is trying to have with Starbucks. Are the profits generated by sales (the stores in the UK) or by devs and backoffice (marketing, branding, sourcing, supply chain, finance etc etc etc), conveniently, but legitimately, placed outside the UK?