Wow, how convenient. Two days after the budget Yahoo has announced its quitting the UK for Switzerland. Stage managed or what?
But, hang on a minute. All is not what it seems. Yahoo has 700 people here. Only 50 are likely to move. So Yahoo are not quitting the UK at all. They're just going to fiddle their taxes in Switzerland.
And then, let's also be clear: this is the last resort of a desperate company that is under threat of the loss of its existence, and which long ago forgot how to add value in Europe except by financial engineering.
It was ever thus. When entrepreneurship fails tax fiddling takes over. And they're not the same thing. Not at all. One adds value to society, and the other quite clearly does not. And that's a very big difference.
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At one point a few years back Y! tried to convince their European execs to move to Ireland to locate profits there. That didn’t happen. Now an entirely new crop (some of them American) are prepared to move to Switzerland. Presumably there are personal as well as corporate tax incentives, which wasn’t so much true in Ireland.
The sales and engineering folks (ie those who undertake the economic activity) will be remaining in London (also France, Norway and Germany). So yes this is tax avoidance.