I am aware, as Bill Dodwell was keen to emphasise in this morning's spat on Starbucks, that Vince Cable had BIS staff review Starbuck's accounts and was told they did not make a profit.
Now BIS is not a tax authority.
Nor, as I know, does it have much accounting expertise - it borrows almost all it needs from the Big 4 as far as I can see.
In that case I do hope it wasn't staff seconded from Deloitte (Starbuck's auditors and Bill Dodwell's firm) who assured Vince Cable that Starbucks made a loss.
I have no idea if it was. I am just hoping it wasn't.
Anyone know?
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Confusing, isn’t that the same Vince Cable that described Starbucks as “tax dodgers” in December 2012?
Indeed
HMRC. They know a little bit about tax but not as much as you and they have clearly been captured too in this grand conspiracy controlled by evil bean counters. Who would have thought the bean counters had sufficient interpersonal skills to achieve this coup? Makes you wonder.
I assure you – some of them know lot more about the detail of tax than I do
I am a systems thinker – and most bean counters have no clue what that means
Does BIS know more or less about tax than the PAC?
The PAC can’t be bought
The implication of your last comment is that Vince Cable has been bought. Is that right?
No
I’m suggesting that if the place is full of seconded staff how do we know it is objective?
Arguably Vince Cable was “bought” – in the sense of signing up to the neoliberal Conservative/Nu Labour agenda – the moment he agreed to enter the Tory-led government in May 2010.
We should keep a focus on Richard’s original question: how many Deloittes people are there inside BIS, and did they have a role in advising Cable? Worth a parliamentary question or a freedom of information request, I’d say.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2012/12/11/1304382/losing-for-tax-purposes-a-diagram/
This is quite useful. It isn’t at all clear whether Starbucks would be profitable in the UK or not.
Quite
What this shows is that if you strip out all of the group charges that we can identify, and make a bold assumption about how much cost is attributable to the coffee markup (I say bold because, strange as it may seem, I don’t think that the cost of coffee is all that much.. and if it is then they’re getting ripped off because the quality of what they serve is dire) then you *might* get to a position where there is a slightly profitable UK business.
If we do get to that position, then it’s only profitable on the basis that it pays nothing for the benefit of the brand, borrows money for nothing, and buys coffee at cost price. That’s not realistic.
There’s no doubt that the Netherlands is the chosen home of the royalties because it’s the most tax efficient option. Locating the coffee buying business in Switzerland seems likely to be motivated similarly. However, that doesn’t change the fact that they’re really not doing all that well in the UK. Whether that’s because they’re inefficient, or still in the ‘investment’ phase (after 15 years) or they’re really just not very good.. well I don’t know.. but long may they continue to be unsuccessful, because if they weren’t then I’d have to start fearing for the (invariably superior) competition.
This is too tedious to comment on