Caved On Tax BreaksReported by Huffington Post on Thursday, 19 July 2012 (on July 19, 2012)
|
We never wanted any tax exemption anyway.
Amid public outcry, Visa and General Electric have joined McDonald's and Coca-Cola in announcing that they won't take a tax break on profits earned at the London Olympics this summer, the Guardian reported Thursday.
In a previous Reuters story, McDonald's and Coca-Cola took pains to emphasize that the recent protests over the exemptions, offered when London won its bid to host the Games, had nothing to do with their decision.
A nonprofit group called 38 Degrees had gathered 165,000 signatures urging corporations to "Stop Olympic Tax Dodging."
McDonald's told Reuters its revenue from the Olympics will amount to just 0.1 percent of its annual sales in Great Britain anyway, so no biggie. Coke said it never intended to take a corporate or tax discount either.
GE said in the Guardian that because its projects are with British companies, the company would pay normal British taxes. Visa also said it was subject to U.K. taxation.
New tax relief-rules forced the London Olympics to offer the exemption for the biggest sponsors, which paid nearly $1 billion for the tightly-enforced rights to serve as sponsors for both the Vancouver Winter Olympics and London Summer Olympics.
Giving global corporate giants a temporary tax haven didn't sit well with the Tax Justice Network, an advocacy group for finance transparency, according to ThinkProgress.org. The group estimated that the freebie would cost the U.K. “tens of millions of pounds” in lost revenue needed to solve the country's debt crisis.
Foreign athletes are also exempt from British income tax, Forbes reported.
Links:  Full news story
|
|
|
| Recent related news |
| No similar news headlines found. | | |
|
|
Facebook
E-mail
Twitter
Mixx
StumbleUpon
FriendFeed