Monday 18 June 2012

Operator? There's a problem with my line.

Vodafone: they're not listening

Things Vodafone wants and which the state funds through taxation:

An educated workforce
A legal system for enforcing bill payment
 A telecommunications infrastructure
A distribution network to ensure that when you decide your phone is a month too old, you can get a new one on the spot
A healthcare system to keep employees and customers alive and texting. It even asks no questions when Vodafone users 'fall' on their phones while doing naked DIY and find the said phone lodged somewhere intimate. 
A benefits system which subsidises Vodafone employees' low pay. 
The advanced technology training required to design and build a satellite and computer-based technology which enables you to view grainy pornography from anywhere in the country (except my flat in a populous central city).
A Foreign Office and Business Office which makes damn sure those pesky Congolese don't start asking for salaries and masks while mining the precious metals required.

Amount Vodafone made in profit from UK operations this year:
£1.3,000,000,000 

Amount Vodafone pays in corporation tax to fund all these things:
£0.0

CEO's salary:
£14,000,000

Cuts to public services this year:
Disabled children's support
SureStart
School Building
NHS infrastructure and staffing
Policing
Armed services
Environmental protection
Tax collectors
Youth services
Employment service
Higher Education
and many more

Thanks to Vodafone and their friends, we will become poorer, sicker and thicker. Then they'll complain that their sales are down and the UK is an unstable market. At no point will they wonder whether they've contributed to this state of affairs at all. 

Obviously it's not just Vodafone amongst telecom firms, or business in general: Tesco are the biggest thieves. But as I have a Vodafone contract, they make me angriest. 

4 comments:

Rolo Tamasi said...

The reason Vodafone paid no tax this year was mainly because of its very high capital investment into the country's infrastructure.

Broadly, capital expenditure is offset against profit in a company’s taxation accounts in the year the cash is expended. However, in the published accounts capital expenditure is charged against profit over the life of the asset.

There are very strong arguments supporting these different approaches for different purposes, which lead to the confusion of the author.


If the author wishes to change this fundamental taxation approach, he should make arguments as to what benefit his changes would bring.

The Plashing Vole said...

Right. So it's not at all about shifting profits to Liechtenstein, and generating paper losses at all?

Rolo Tamasi said...

It's obviously not about generating paper losses as you are complaining the paper profits are too high compared with the tax.

Do you have any proposals to change the taxation of capital expenditure?

Historian on the Edge said...

Can we have a figure on Vodafone's 'very high capital investment into the country's infastructure' - and details of what infrastructure was invested in? The country's infrastructure, remember, not Vodafone's network infrastructure, fromwhich it generates profit. And whom does Rolo Tomasi work for? It couldn't be Vodafone could it?