Interesting Facts

Today - 30th May 2013 is Tax Freedom Day in the UK. The day when you've actually earned enough to pay tax, NI contributions etc, and are now working for yourself. (Unless you are Starbucks, Amazon, Apple or Google of course. In which case, every day is tax freedom day.)

Apple  paid less than 2% tax on profit made outside the United States last year. (They paid $713m (£445m) in overseas corporation tax on foreign profits of $36.87bn (£23bn) in the year to the end of September. That translates as a tax rate of 1.9%, compared to a headline corporation tax rate of 35% in the US and 24% in the UK.   Executives from Google, Amazon and Starbucks will be hauled before the Commons public accounts committee in the UK on Monday 5th November 2012.  They will be asked to explain why they pay so little tax to the exchequer. Analysis by the Guardian found that Google, Amazon, Starbucks and Facebook have paid just £30m in tax over the past four years despite generating more than £3.1bn in sales.)