It's not even as if Dyson invented the concept of the cyclone - such a device was used in wood workshop vacuums but on a much bigger scale, years before his device. To give some credit, an invention is a novel application or combination of several existing technologies, so I could grudgingly concede him that.
I agree fully.
Jazper,it tends to be the big multinationals who have the possibility to move their profits around the world to their tax advantage,us SME's just cannot hide the profits to the same extent and therefore pay a disproportionate amount of tax. If I add up rates,corporation tax,vat,paye etc I pay 4 times in tax to that which I put in my pocket,the risk-reward ratio is such that at times one wonders whether its worth the effort,but I enjoy my work. A company like Amazon or Google can easily move their profits to Ireland (12% corporation tax),if I went anywhere near an Irish company HMRC would go through me. I don't blaim Jimmy Carr trying to legally avoid tax,Tony Blair and Philip Green are good roll models.
Tax avoidance is legal and something anyone opening an ISA account does, they wouldn't be under investigation for that. I don't find it surprising as any company that large will be closely watched, a bit of a non news item really.
In fact high intelligence can be and often is a bar to running a successful business. The intelligence to see the scale of the problems of starting up one can easily stop an intelligent person in their tracks, where a not very bright person will just blunder in and start up. The short sighted types who seem to run many bike shop businesses are surely an indication of that.
Dyson moving his manufacturing to China made perfect economic sense. What makes his example particularly objectionable to many was the way he retained the very high British manufactured prices immediately after doing that, three times and more that of the other Chinese made cyclone cleaners. Presumably this was to con those who didn't know he'd moved his production, but he's been increasingly losing business ever since as people wake up. Like Scimitar above, I wouldn't touch any product of his now.
We have in the Pedelec business a well known company who has a union jack sticker on every bike and a large union jack logo on his stand at the cycle show but those bikes are manufactured in Shanghai. All our bikes are manufactured in China and if asked I tell my customers. Should we not have a rule that if you use a union jack on a product,then that product should be UK made or at least assembled in the UK?
Who is this please? I'd like to know because I make a point of avoiding businesses and individuals who have such contempt for their customers that they operate in this way.
Mussels,I used to work for a large multinational who constantly moved their profits around the world,HMRC just don't have the expertise or manpower to do the forensic accounts investigations to determine why one particular division makes more profits than another,tax payments at that level is more about social awareness than real numbers.
Tillson,I made a conscious decision not to state the company name because i thought it would be a bit of sport for others to work it out.
My Kalkhoff has got a swastika on it which means that it must have come from The Fatherland, so its not that one and I couldn't work out how to operate my Biro, so I couldn't fill in the Mensa question paper. You are just going to have to tell me.
The "well known" company distributes bikes that "... are designed for the UK, European, Australasian, American and Asian electric bike markets ..." Do all these bikes fly the Union Flag or do they fly the flag of the country in which they are distributed? As the company is British they should fly the Union Flag world wide, otherwise, it becomes a "flag of convenience"!
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No doubt they do, the Union Flag is displayed prominently on the home page of their website for all the world to see, clearly they are proud to be a British company.
