May 2015 UK General Election Campaign.

[Agelastus]

How about this?

On a more serious note, though, that map illustrates the problem, in a way; just what regions could/should be used for devolution. I live in Northamptonshire, officially a part of the East Midlands, technically a part of Mercia.

Take a look at the regional television map and guess which region I feel closest too in my personal identity...

http://www.itvmedia.co.uk/new-to-itv/itv-regions

[Valmy]

The green one in the middle?

[alfred russel]

Why is Millibrand the Labour leader? I thought Gordon Brown was a good dude. Why couldn't he do a comeback?

[Agelastus]

The green one in the middle?

When I was very young I did live in a house where the aerial could pick up both Central and Anglia; for the last thirty years though the ITV region's been Anglia and solely Anglia.

I feel utterly unattached to both the East Midlands or Mercia as a result despite what the maps and regions suggest.

[Habbaku]

How about this?

On a more serious note, though, that map illustrates the problem, in a way; just what regions could/should be used for devolution. I live in Northamptonshire, officially a part of the East Midlands, technically a part of Mercia.

Take a look at the regional television map and guess which region I feel closest too in my personal identity...

http://www.itvmedia.co.uk/new-to-itv/itv-regions

Was it necessary to quote the picture again?

[Tamas]

How about this?

On a more serious note, though, that map illustrates the problem, in a way; just what regions could/should be used for devolution. I live in Northamptonshire, officially a part of the East Midlands, technically a part of Mercia.

Take a look at the regional television map and guess which region I feel closest too in my personal identity...

http://www.itvmedia.co.uk/new-to-itv/itv-regions

Was it necessary to quote the picture again?

Personally, I like it.

[Tamas]

Also, I am raising my eyebrows every time a Brit blames financial trickeries for their country's problems. As I understand the only reason the UK's economy is not in a dump is that it has been the favourite playground of EU rule-bending bankers since the 70s

[Zanza]

Yeah. On the other hand, if eg. Amazon's "tax evasion" (IDK if doing something perfectly legal in the EU is tax evasion) results in them being able to offer the cheapest and fastest service to customers, then maybe it isnt that Luxembourg's taxes are low, but rather, the others are high?

No. I'll quote myself from another thread:

Or Spain could compete with Ireland on lowering corporate taxes. But of course, much easier to punish Ireland than to change something in Spain.

Ireland can afford the low corporate tax rate for reasons that Spain and other countries cannot emulate and can never compete on.

Ireland has just 4.6 million people to Spain's 46 million people. So let's assume that Spain roughly needs ten times the government revenue that Ireland needs.

There is a finite number of multi-national corporations in the world and they typically need just one HQ in the EU due to it being a common market.

As Ireland just needs a tenth of Spain's government revenue it can compensate a low tax rate for its domestic corporations by enticing a higher than proportional number of multi-nationals to open shop in Ireland and paying taxes there.

Spain cannot do that as it will never be able to attract enough multi-nationals to offset the loss in tax revenue for lowering the tax rate for its domestic companies to match Ireland's low rate.

And if you look beyond Spain, Ireland has less than 1% of the EU population. For simplicity sake, let's assume the EU was perfectly equal in tax revenues and government expenditures. If a tiny piece of the EU attracts a lot of multi-nationals through a low corporate tax rate, the other 99% of the EU can't just lower their tax rate accordingly and hope for multi-nationals to somehow materialize out of nowhere and start paying taxes to compensate. Mainly because there just aren't that many multi-nationals.

Ireland is only in this position thanks to their membership in the EU. But they exploit that by establishing a policy that the bigger EU countries cannot enact themselves. The only other countries that can compete on this policy are typically considered tax havens as well, e.g. Luxembourg.

And to suggest that Amazon's logistics have anything to do with its tax domicile in the EU is ridiculous. They aren't exactly sending out the stuff you get from Luxembourg. That's done from local warehouses.

[Valmy]

The States in the US play the same game with places like Delaware having a hilariously large number of corporate HQs. However at least the other states all get sweet federal money to assuage their rage.

[Zanza]

In Tamas' ideology a vicious circle mechanism like this that ultimately destroys tax revenue for the benefit of the rich (corporate owners) is probably something good. Starve the government of money and it can do less "harm" as he sees it.

[grumbler]

In Tamas' ideology a vicious circle mechanism like this that ultimately destroys tax revenue for the benefit of the rich (corporate owners) is probably something good. Starve the government of money and it can do less "harm" as he sees it.

Thanks for telling us what Tamas thinks and sees.  If not for you, we'd have to take his own biased word on what he thinks... or, at least, what he thinks he thinks.

[Tamas]

In Tamas' ideology a vicious circle mechanism like this that ultimately destroys tax revenue for the benefit of the rich (corporate owners) is probably something good. Starve the government of money and it can do less "harm" as he sees it.

My point was that Amazon gets a competitive advantage because it pays less tax than smaller competitors who can't afford to go to tax-manipulating Luxembourg.

So, MAYBE, if everyone was as lenient on corporations as Luxembourg is via its trickery, then the positive effect on corporate growth and heavier competition would outweight the negative of less tax money for the state to play with.

[Zanza]

Hmm.

Nah.

[Gups]

Also, I am raising my eyebrows every time a Brit blames financial trickeries for their country's problems. As I understand the only reason the UK's economy is not in a dump is that it has been the favourite playground of EU rule-bending bankers since the 70s

Assuming that's true (it isn't) which UK policies encourage banks to HQ here rather than Frankfurt or Paris?

[Valmy]

Or maybe corporate taxes could be assessed and distributed on the EU level 

Haha just kidding.