Who was at the TUC 'auserity march' today?

I'm not pulling anything down, I simply won't use it (except for free books on my Kindle, which don't make Amazon any money anyway). My purchase on line yesterday (Moshi Monsters, £7.99) will be my last until they pay tax here on purchases from citizens living here. It won't make a dent in their profits, it will barely scratch their paintwork, but you have to find principles to live by, don't you?

When enough big organisations trading on line have located themselves in places like Luxembourg and the tax "take" becomes sufficiently small, the government might actually wake up and do something about it.

Good.

DTES, if you can't understand why it's wrong for someone or some entity to come over here, make lots of money but minimise the amount of tax they pay in the country they're earning it in, then I think you're just being a bit of a contrary bugger. You're obviously right to say it's not illegal, which means such loopholes need to be closed. However, it is clearly immoral wherever it's done.

It isn't "wrong" or "immoral". It's just inappropriate.

The last two paragraphs of the Guardian article I flagged yesterday:

"Earlier this year the Guardian revealed that Amazon generated sales of more than £3.3bn via its UK website last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income.

"Security and Exchange Commission filings, highlighted by Bookseller magazine, show that in the past three years, Amazon generated sales of more than £7.6bn in the UK without attracting any corporation tax on the profits from those sales."

It's absurd to let a company have vast turnover here and not pay tax here, in relation to that turnover. If that turnover went through UK companies based here, the profits would be duly taxed and full VAT would be paid.

The question is, when will the government wake up to doing something effective about it? It's crazy for the tories to complain they're short of money while allowing potential tax revenue to be leaked away like this.

I'd be suprised that a company paying normal corporation tax (far lower than income tax, let's not forget, and in the UK one of the lowest levels of this type of tax in the western world) would find itself going bankrupt. If you don't actually make a profit, you don't have to pay it. So if the company you worked for wasn't profitable, it wasn't having to pay tax that made it so. You seem to believe it's ok for companies to play the tax system, so presumably you just shrugged your shoulders when made redundant and said 'I don't blame them for moving to a more tax-friendly zone'. Hey ho.

It doesn't make me happy seeing the Luxembourg government enriched by my purchases on Amazon, because they're a tiny nation and so, only too happy to undercut everyone else on VAT. What sort of nonsense is that? My buying something has nothing to do with the Luxembourg government.

Another sigh. I think you're misrepresenting Colin, but wilfully because that's your way. You should take a leaf out of your former company's books and follow the cheap tax rates. Good luck.

I don't want them to leave. I just want there to be a fair set of rules.

Anyway, I have to work now, so...

As you say, you have principles.