printHurray. Google Goes Galt, as a sickly Starbucks (what do you expect from people who burn their coffee beans) prepares to “‘voluntarily’ hand more money over to the UK Government.”
With their unbounded enthusiasm for state power, British protesters prefer that their omnivorous state own what belongs to Amazon, Starbucks and Google. But Google Big Guy has other ideas. Libertarian ones.
“Google boss: ‘I’m very proud of our tax avoidance scheme'”:
The head of the internet giant Google has defiantly defended his company’s tax avoidance strategy claiming he was “proud” of the steps it had taken to cut its tax bill which were just “capitalism”.
In an interview in New York Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman, confirmed the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer. … “It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.”
He also ruled out following Starbucks in voluntarily handing more money over to the UK Government.
“There are lots of benefits to [being in Britain],” he said.
“It’s very good for us, but to go back to shareholders and say, ‘We looked at 200 countries but felt sorry for those British people so we want to [pay them more]’, there is probably some law against doing that.”
For a background on the British assault on tax havens, please read “Could Her Subjects Be Making Kate Middleton Sick?”