Interesting Links for 06-04-2012

[andrewducker]

• Amazon.co.uk: £7bn sales, no UK corporation tax
  (tags: amazon uk tax )
• A journalist writes about being rewritten by the Daily Mail, and why their articles all sound the same.
  (tags: uk media journalism DailyMail )
• A petition against the UK government snooping on email, websites, etc.
  (tags: privacy uk )
• Court rules that Tory NHS Bill was a

Comments

[philmophlegm]

I don't see an easy way around the Amazon problem. We have a single market in the European Union, so if a Luxembourg company sells things to British customers (or for that matter French customers, German customers etc) and makes profits on those sales, you would expect the profits it makes to be taxed in its own country, i.e. Luxembourg

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I don't see a simple solution either. If you have an open single market with differing rates of corporation tax then some companies will make use of this to move their base to the country with the lowest tax.

I could see a solution whereby if you are actually shipping from inside the UK (as Amazon are) then that counts as a company, rather than merely a distribution hub. But that's going to be fiddly and lawyer-prone.

[danieldwilliam]

I know I should know this but how are Luxembourg's EU contributions calculated?

If countries with low corporate tax regimes attract company headquarters which in turn increases their EU contribution which is then spent on EU regional development & projects (including in the UK) then it's not quite as stark as £7bn sales no tax contribution.

Also, tax incidence considerations.

Also, payroll & income tax, business rates & VAT (will need to refresh my knowledge of cross border VAT).

[danieldwilliam]

I think Amazon would have to pay UK VAT.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/distance-selling.htm

[thakil]

To quote myself on that A-level story

"It is important to be careful when making broad conclusions from a set of data of correlations. To be clear, what this study demonstrates is that the intake of physics students to Bristol university have shown a steady decline in achievement in a particular test Bristol university applies.

You have then taken this fact to apply a conclusion, that A-levels have become worse at preparing students for university physics. But sadly, as you have not presented the information on the students each year, it could equally be due to changing demographics in Bristol applications over that amount of time.

I suspect this study is reasonable evidence of a decline in certain A-level standards, but without demographic data it is currently not terribly meaningful.

You also suggest three conclusions as to why A-levels are worse, but these arguments are not as substantiated."

[mair_aw]

... or the A-level content could just be /different/, rather than less. I mean, they say the test hasn't changed. Maybe A-level physics now learn less about gravity, but more about cosmology, or something.

[andrewducker]

This is very true. If it's more about philosophy of science, and less about memorising log tables then the same tests will show different results over time.

[mair_aw]

I took modular A-level physics in 1998/1999, and at that time there was an array of modules available to choose from. iirc three were mandatory, one was the experimental, and then we had to make choices about the last two. So coming up to uni I could easily know something (in a module I took) that another student with the same grade via different modules didn't know. I imagine the curriculum had less width in 197-whatever.