A them-or-us battle seems unavoidable - Taxing international corporations

It may be difficult this morning, as you finally choose between Delia’s or Darina’s turkey stuffing, to wonder how liberal democracies might stop the backwards slide into something like neo-feudalism built on supine international tax codes. 

Though the turkey crisis may take priority today, it is impossible to ignore another set of figures, published just this week, which show how corporations drive a sleigh-and-four through the powerful, sustaining idea of social obligation.

Google saved €3.45bn in taxes last year by moving €14.9bn to a Bermudan shell company. €12bn of that came from Google Ireland Limited, which processes most of Google’s international advertising revenues. Alphabet — Google’s owners — also moves the bulk of its non-US profits through a Dutch subsidiary that has no employees. This is another episode in the narrative that has come to represent the ugly face of capitalism, Ireland’s questionable role in that three-card-trickery, and the capacity — or real desire — of national parliaments to confront the issue.