Starbucks has exploited accounting tricks to pay almost no UK tax on the millions of coffees, sandwiches and cakes bought by the British public over the past decade, it was
revealed yesterday.

An investigation showed that the coffee company has paid only £8m in corporation tax to HMRC in the 14 years since it arrived on British high streets, despite generating sales of £3 billion.

Loop holes like this piss me off.

You are not the only one.

Only because you and I can't take advantage of them.

It can't piss that many people off. Many of the worst offenders at this sort of thing have huge business to consumer operations and plenty of competition for your money. They risk losing huge sums of cash if consumers revolt against their products and services.

I can't personally do any more to deprive SB of my business than I already do by never drinking their sludge. But I can't help but notice that no company is advertising to me on the basis of how honest they are with their taxes. So it seems we all know about lots of tax dodging corps, and we feel that we are being stolen from because they are shifting their financial burden onto us, but we just aren't acting as rationally self interested consumers by punishing them even when the tool to do so is easily at hand.

Alas to properly organise a tax weary consumer boycott we would of course have to use Facebook, which is almost certainly a paradox.

So it seems we all know about lots of tax dodging corps, and we feel that we are being stolen from because they are shifting their financial burden onto us, but we just aren't acting as rationally self interested consumers by punishing them even when the tool to do so is easily at hand.