Mickey Mouse the scrounger Tucked away in the Guardian at the end of September , an article revealed that the British government had since 2007 handed Disney almost £170m to make films here. Last year alone the Californian giant took £50m in tax credits. By way of comparison, in April the government will scrap a £347m crisis fund that provides emergency cash for families on the verge of homelessness or starvation. In the financial year 2011-12 the subsidies and grants paid directly to businesses. amounted to over £14bn – that is, almost three times the £5bn paid out that year in income-based jobseeker’s allowance. Add to that the corporate tax benefits, the value of the cheap credit made available to banks and other business, the insurance schemes run by the government to protect exporters, the marketing for British business laid on by Vince Cable’s ministry, the public procurement from the private sector … and it is calculated that direct corporate welfare costs British taxpayers just shy of £85bn a year. Of the 44 companies that received over £1m in government grants between 2005 and 2011, 13 didn’t pay any corporation tax at all; a further 17 didn’t pay any corporation tax either the year before or the year of receiving their public money. These aren’t two-bit firms, either: The list includes Tesco Personal Finance, Dell and Plusnet. And, of course, Amazon – which in 2011 alone took £7.7m from Holyrood for placing a distribution centre in Fife. The Welsh assembly promised it even more: £8.8m, as well as a £3m highway to connect its operations with other road networks. Just finished, it’s called the Ffordd Amazon road, for the avoidance of ambiguity about whose interests it’s meant to serve. So the next time they talk of scroungers, cannot afford benefits, immigrants cost too much and the rest Remind them of Mickey Mouse and his big business mates bleeding us by the billion. Info from The Guardian 6.10.2014 Chakrobartty
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 11:11:21 +0000
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