Not Enough Bullets

The tech companies are trying to dodge taxes again:

Silicon Valley has launched a last-ditch attempt to derail plans devised by the G20 group of countries to close down international loopholes that are exploited by the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple to pay less tax in the UK and elsewhere.

The Digital Economy Group, a lobbying group dominated by the leading US digital firms, has written to the OECD, the Paris-based thinktank tasked by G20 leaders with drawing up reforms, saying it is not true that communications advances have allowed multinational groups to game national tax systems.

Suggesting that any leakage of tax revenues flowing from the complex corporate structures of digital groups is merely coincidental, the Digital Economy Group says: "Enterprises that employ digital communications models do not organise their business operations differently as a legal or tax matter."

Their denial of tax engineering follows a string of tax scandals in Europe and the US in the past two years. In the UK, Google bore the brunt of criticism from Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, after it emerged that Google – which the Guardian understands is a member of the DEG – had been allowed to pay £3.4m in tax to HMRC in 2012 despite UK revenues of £3.2bn.

"Merely coincidental," my ass.  0.09% tax rate?  This is not a boating accident.

I guess that you need all that money you save from tax cheating that you can pay your senior executives obscene bonuses.

How about throwing these motherf%$#ers in jail.