Today’s The Day Vodafone Gets A Kicking About Tax
VODAFONE has just released the numbers for how much corporation tax it paid in the UK last year. Nowt.
Yup, they made a profit of £294 million in the UK and paid absolutely nothing in corporation tax on that number. We’ll no doubt see the kids from UKUncut having a demo outside one or two of the stores today.
Vodafone has issued a new defence of its tax affairs as revealed it again paid no corporation tax in the UK last year, the third year in a row.
The mobile giant paid £275m in direct UK taxes, down from £338m the previous year. Corporation tax accounted for almost none of the bill, which was made up of other forms of taxation such as business rates on Vodafone premises and VAT.
The company, which published the figures for the second time as part of a new transparency effort, accused critics of failing to understand that corporation tax is due on profits rather than revenues. It said Britain was “one of the least-profitable mobile markets anywhere in the world”.
Vodafone reported UK profits of £294m on a turnover of £5.2bn last year
The thing is though those kiddies will be wrong to be protesting. For the reason that Vodafone paid no tax in the UK is entirely within the tax laws. It’s not actually about anything dodgy at all. They spent £1 billion on building their 4G network this year. And no, they can’t write all of that off against their tax bill in one year but they can write it off over a number of years. They also sent £790 million to the Treasury. No, not in tax but as the licence fee for the 4G spectrum they bought. Again, they can’t write that off against their tax in one single year but they can write off a bit of it each year.
And the other thing is that they paid £600 million in interest on the debts that they’ve run up to buy all that equipment and spectrum.
There’s nothing dodgy about any of this it’s all just straight vanilla and plain accounting.
Not going to stop the idiots superglueing themselves to shop windows of course.
Posted: 30th, December 2013 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
