nuff said

Quote from former inspector my Dad knows:

[The inland rev] if they can't win they'll have the rules changed.

Be very afraid...

If the tax man loses I wonder if I can "move" my company to somewhere in Europe as well?

...when you hand your powers over to someone else. Not such a great idea now is it Gordo.

on the one hand I cheer "good for vodafone" because I despise HMRC; on the other I despise vodafone so it's a hard choice over who I'd have wanted to win.

what sticks in my craw is the way the UK cherry picks EU rules to adopt and enforce, we seem to get all the ones which give the gov't more power to take money and rights from the people and none of the pro-citizen ones (e.g. privacy, human rights etc).

the UK needs to decide whether to be part of the greedy EU or not, personally I'm for the latter, but the sooner proper harmonisation of tax, citizen's rights takes place the better it might be for us. Fuel and alcohol duty are good examples of the way the UK gov't bleed the people dry.

errr .. your argument needs to be refined. It would appear its the government being greedy and again being found to have cherry picked the EU laws it likes whilst willfully misconstruing some (the new passport requirements for example do not call for a database) and as you say not enacting the ones its doesn't like (working time directive).

How you get from this to wanting out of the EU ... well its not part of your argument. Its like watching one of Pavlov's dogs, sit up and beg Daily Mail boy. sigh ....

Also your title needs some work as it has no bearing on the comment, a better one would be

"This is illogical ... Captain"

"UK Gov shite ... get rid of EU clamors armchair pundit"

"Daily Mail killed my critical thinking"

or my personal fav ..

"Bitter geek in flaming tragedy - chips on both shoulders spontaneously combust"

Appears you don't know a lot about how the EU works! These laws have been negotiated over and could have been stopped by the UK government if it wanted.

Lots of Daily Mail readers complain about the EU but most don't know who there MEP is, even less bothered to vote.

I also think the situation is more complicated than it seems as the money went to a Luxembourg company but can't have been taken straight into Vodafone, or they would have been taxed on the difference between what they had already paid and what they should have paid under UK tax. I don't know what they did but there must be some other fiddle involved.

So if the other country had higher tax rates would the company get a rebate?

Serious question, they might, be the sceptic in me says 'fat chance'.

cos HMRC will have to make up the shortfall from somewhere. Imminent extra 5p/pack of smokes, 1p/litre petrol, 2p/pint of beer increases on the horizon? I don't doubt it for a moment. *sigh*

There's a particular irony in HM.gov being one of the primary resisters to tax harmonisation within the EU. I don't know enough on the subject to even vaguely know whether it's a good idea or not but one suspects that the table rigging, err rejig, from HMRC will have to be along the lines of a tax hammering once the assets are merged ie said money returns to Blighty.

"Lots of Daily Mail readers complain about the EU but most don't know who there MEP is, even less bothered to vote."

Or even that since 1999, everyone in the UK has at least 3 MEPs due to the nature of the PR system we use.

Coat please!

Most of our rights were given up by the last government under the Maastricht treaty which makes the Lisbon treaty look rather wet. That was pretty much the words of Ken Clark, as Matt says most ill informed Daily Bigot readers wouldn't know that.

We pay too much tax in the UK so is it any wonder individuals or companies seek to evade it?

If we got out of the EU so that we did not have to pump billions into it, stopped our government from spending money on crap like mousemats and the olympic bid and got rid of the legalised thieves that sit in parliament and claim a large salary and ridiculous epenses then they could afford major tax custs and have the health service back to being world class, more coppers on the streets and fund research into major killers such as cancer.

I wholeheartedly understand companies/individuals that do this because of the high rate of tax though I don't agree with tax evasion if the rate was reasonable.

Perhaps we UK subjects can elect the Government of another EU state to manage the UK for us?

If I claim too much for mileage or subsistence, the tax man is on my back. If I claim any other expenses they have to be fully itemised above a very low limit or again the Tax man cometh. My mum retired as a teacher and they pursued her even after her death just in case she had any extra income they hadn't known about for the previous 40 years.

It is about time that HMRC went after the real Tax Evaders and they should start at Westminster.

"HMRC will appeal the ruling"

And spend yet more money, which they collected from everyone else!

to misquote..

"It is every pounds duty to try and escape [the tax man]"