Boots the Chemist

[David Johnson]

Until UK governments of any flavour get a grip of the corporate tax avoidance scam, we are all up the Orinoco without a paddle.

Boots made ?1 billion profit last year. Corporation tax ?25 million. Work it out! Slightly less than the rate of tax you pay as an employee or self-employed person?

Here's how the scam works, boys and girls. Boots was bought by an American private equity fund at the height of the banking boom with a loan of ?9bn. If you need more info as to how this works get in touch with the Glazers, the owners of Man Utd.

Boots used to pay about ?150 million in corporation tax, but under UK tax rules you can offset the interest you pay on your debt against corporation tax. But these rules were originally put in place to make it easier for new businesses to grow, not to provide a way forward for private equity funds to take a well-established company and buy it on the never never.

So loss to you, me and the Treasury by this little dodge - ?125 million and that's just one company. By the way the company for tax reasons is based in that well known industrial powerhouse of Zug in Switzerland.

So as these guys clean up, the disabled protest at losing the funds that would help them to have a little dignity in their lives. Where's my sub-machine gun?

And just to give you that extra warm feeling. Until April, the chairman was one Andy Hornby, the ex-head of Halifax Bank of Scotland that did such a fantastic job, he brought the bank to its knees where it had to be bailed out by Lloyds and us, the taxpayer.

Look after yourselves now, ya hear

Cheers
D

[jimslip]

These bastards have been getting away with these scams for decades and NO government has done a thing to plug up the loopholes for fear of being branded, "Too Leftie".

That would be fine, if they didn't instead clobber the small business and the working individual for every penny they can get. That's why there is so much apathy, everyone knows who both parties REALLY represent, big business and big money.

The politicians think that if you leave these bastards to do anything they like, somehow they'll throw a few crumbs down to the rest of us. Which they will not!