Corporate Whinge

Starbucks – doing you a favour by not making any money out of UK!! 

Speaking from Westminster recently, Roger said: “The astonishingly pathetic assertion by Starbucks Finance Chief to MPs that ‘the company makes no profit in Britain’ must rank as the joke of the year. 

Despite having 31% of the British market he asserted that Starbucks had only once turned a profit in 15 years despite the company telling it American investors that it was ‘very satisfied with the way its British operation was working!’ 

So, lucky Starbucks coffee drinkers, just be thankful that when you pay for your next cup of coffee at Starbucks remember you are being subsidised by the company - and not taken for a ride!” 

Kraft – or just krafty? 

Commenting on the furore swilling around regarding the revelations that companies like Starbucks, Amazon, Google and Facebook have paid just £30 million in Corporation Tax in the UK on sales of £3.1 billion over the last four years Roger said recently: “ I wrote to Kraft, who took over Cadbury’s, to ask how much Corporation Tax they had paid.  As you can imagine they were extremely guarded over their figures and said that they paid Corporation Tax ‘based on the laws of the countries in which we operate including the UK’. 

They also said ‘like most global businesses we pay most of our Corporation Tax in the countries where we have headquarters’.  Kraft is not headquartered in the UK and, neither for that matter, was Cadbury’s who were headquartered in Switzerland and operated through numerous different companies based in all parts of the world.

 

Of course Kraft trumpet that they employ 5,500 people in the UK and allegedly contribute £272 million to the local economy in Birmingham but the fact remains that Kraft pays far less in Corporation Tax on the profits it makes in the UK and the number of people it employs in this country is less than Cadburys employed – so what has been the benefit to Birmingham and the United Kingdom economy of the acquisition of Cadburys by Kraft.”