USA- US Unions regain strengh as Starbucks werkers strike in mo re then 100 stores

Members of the Starbucks Workers Union are picketing outside more than a hundred stores across the country on what they say is the group's largest single-day strike. The walkout falls on what's known as Red Cup Day, when the coffee giant hands out limited-edition holiday reusable cups. They're considered collector's items and customers line up at the crack of dawn to get their hands on a decorated cup. It's one of the coffee giant's most profitable days on the calendar. 

Read more at: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1137296597/starbucks-strike-red-cup-day

USA -Chicago: At Least 3 Shot, 1 Dead After Shooting At Chicago Starbucks - by Shreesha Ghosh

One man was killed and two others were wounded, including a 12-year-old boy, in a shooting Thursday night at a Starbucks in the Uptown neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago, authorities said.

The shooting happened around 8:10 p.m. EDT at Broadway and Lawrence at a Starbucks outlet located at 4753 N. Broadway, according to Chicago police and fire officials.

The deceased was shot in the body and was declared dead at the scene, police said adding that the 12-year-old was shot in the groin and was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center by ambulance immediately. Fire officials said the boy was in serious-to-critical condition.

Another adult male who was also shot and he self-transported himself to Weiss Memorial Hospital, police said. His condition is not yet known.

A witness told CBS local in Chicago that he heard gunfire and saw a suspect wearing a ski mask escape the scene after the shooting, reportedly running west on Lawrence.

Note EU-Digest:  When will politicians in America get it into their head that some kind of gun control is needed in America, regardless how much money the NRA gives them for their political campaigns? Even ISIS is now telling their "followers and admirers" how easy it is to get guns in America.....Come on Political America, get with the program - We need Gun Control legislation in America.

Read more: At Least 3 Shot, 1 Dead After Shooting At Chicago Starbucks

EU Taxation Policies: US warns EU over Apple’s tax case

Is Apple cutting corners when paying taxes?

The US government has threatened the European Commission (EC) with retaliation if the body decides to proceed with its plan to demand millions of dollars in unpaid taxes from technology giant Apple.

The US Treasury Department issued a rare warning on Wednesday, August 24, accusing the Brussels-based body of becoming a “supranational tax authority” that poses a threat to international agreements concerning tax reform.

“The US Treasury Department continues to consider potential responses should the Commission continue its present course,” the Treasury said in its strongest language to date.

“A strongly preferred and mutually beneficial outcome would be a return to the system and practice of international tax cooperation that has long fostered cross-border investment between the United States and EU member states,” the warning added.

The European Union (EU) has been investigating a series of tax deals between Apple and Ireland which allow the iPhone maker to pay little or no tax on income earned across Europe.

The EC is expected to rule on the case next month. This is the biggest corporate tax avoidance investigation ever undertaken by the commission.

The EC is the executive body of the EU, responsible for implementing decisions, proposing legislation, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the bloc.

According to investment bank JP Morgan, if Apple is forced to retroactively pay the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent on its pre-tax profits, the company might need to cash out as much as $19 billion.

A 2013 report by US Senate confirmed that Apple has paid little to no taxes on at least $74 billion of the profit it earned by exploiting Irish and American tax laws.

Tim Cook, who became Apple’s CEO after the death of its founder Steve Jobs five years ago, has denounced the case as “political crap.”

“There is no truth behind it,” he said. “Apple pays every tax dollar we owe.”

The EU estimates that tax avoidance by multinational corporations costs member states anywhere between $50 million to $78 billion a year in lost taxes.

In addition to Apple, other American companies like Amazon and Starbucks are also suspected of tax evasion.

Note EU-Digest: Hopefully the EU Commission does not cave-in for these US misguided threats and intimidations and tells the US Treasury Department where to shove this warning, which is protective of US corporate tax evaders.   

Read more: PressTV-US warns EU over Apple’s tax case

Sweetheart Tax Deals: Luxleaks committee demands overhaul of EU tax rules - by Benjamin Fox

Governments that offer multi-national firms sweetheart tax deals should not be allowed to benefit if the European Union orders them to claw back the aid, according to a new report by the European Parliament’s special committee on tax rulings.

Instead, the proceeds should be “returned to the member states which have suffered from an erosion of their tax bases or to the EU budget, and not to the member state which granted the illegal tax-related aid, as is currently the case,” the report contends.

The European Commission is still investigating whether so-called ‘sweetheart’ tax agreements in Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, involving companies such a Apple, Starbucks and Fiat, constitute illegal state aid. The probe could lead to hundreds of millions of euros in new taxes being paid to the governments in question, despite the fact that they were responsible for offering special tax treatment.

The cross-party inquiry committee was set up in February in the wake of the “LuxLeaks” scandal, in which reporters disclosed the extent of tax-avoidance structures in Luxembourg allowing companies to benefit from significant reductions to their tax rate on income earned from intellectual property.

Also included in the 40-page draft report by Michael Theurer, a German liberal, and Elisa Ferreira, the Socialist group spokesperson on economic affairs, are recommendations that firms which refused to assist the committee investigation should be banned from the EU’s Transparency Register allowing them to access the EU institutions.

The MEPs also call for comprehensive exchange of tax information between European countries alongside a common consolidated corporate tax base.

Read more: Luxleaks committee demands overhaul of EU tax rules

Coffee hits the spot: How coffee changed the world - by Tom Oder

Hundreds of years before Starbucks became a hot spot for making social and business connections over lattes and laptops, thriving coffeehouses of a much different type were widely popular in the Arab world.

Those first coffeehouses were in the holy city of Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia. Nothing like them had ever existed.

These were public places, known as kaveh kanes, where people gathered for the same reasons they go to Starbucks today, for coffee and conversation, to discover and share the news of the day, and to conduct business. They also enjoyed music, but not through earbuds plugged into mobile devices, of course.

Those early Arabian coffeehouses were vibrant places that pulsated with singing and dancing performers gyrating to the rhythm of Middle Eastern music.

Then, as now, thousands of pilgrims from all over the world visited Mecca each year. When they returned home in those long ago times, they took with them stories about the "wine of Araby," as coffee was once called. But Arab leaders didn't want to lose their monopoly on the coffee trade.

To prevent coffee from being cultivated elsewhere and to make sure that stories were all the pilgrims took home, the imams banned the export of coffee beans. Dutch traders circumvented these export restrictions in 1616, and the world hasn't been the same since.

What is known from historical records is that the first substantiated knowledge of the wonders of the coffee tree or the drinking of coffee occurred in the mid-15th century in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen. The Arabs were not only the first to cultivate coffee and the first to turn coffee beans into a drinkable liquid but also the first to begin the coffee trade. By the sixteenth century, coffee was known in Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey.

By the late 1600s, the Dutch started growing coffee outside of the Arab world, first in a failed attempt at Malabar in India and then, in 1699, in Batavia in Java in what is now Indonesia. It didn't take long before Dutch colonies became the main suppliers of coffee to Europe, where people had heard stories from travelers to the Near East of an unusual black beverage.

The first coffeehouses outside of the Ottoman Empire appeared in Europe in Venice in 1629. The first coffeehouse opened in England in Oxford in 1652, and by 1675 there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in the country. Lloyd's of London was Edward Lloyd's Coffee House, before it was a global insurance company.

The first coffeehouse opened in Paris in 1672 and then perhaps the city's most famous coffeehouse, Café Procope, opened in 1686 (sketched at right in 1743). It was a popular meeting place during the French Enlightenment, arguably the birthplace of the encyclopedia and is still open today.

Interestingly, coffee wasn't popular at first with everyone in Europe. Some called it the "bitter invention of Satan," and the clergy in Venice condemned it. Pope Clement VIII was asked to intervene and, finding it to his liking, gave coffee Papal approval.

Customs of the day did not always approve of women in coffeehouses. Women were banned from many of these early European coffeehouses, particularly in England and France. Germany, however, did allow women to frequent them.

The first coffeehouses in the New World appeared in the mid-1600s in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and other towns of the British colonies. Even so, tea was the preferred drink. That changed forever when the colonists revolted against King George in 1773 by dumping tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party, which was planned in a coffeehouse, the Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York started in coffeehouses in what is today known as Wall Street.

Read more: How coffee changed the world | MNN - Mother Nature Network

The Netherlands: The Tax Attraction Between Starbucks and the Netherlands - by Danny Hakim

American companies have plowed more money into the Netherlands than any other country in the world — for five years running.

This does not reflect a new fascination with pot or pancakes. It is about the taxes, or lack of them.

The laws in Netherlands shield a variety of profits from taxation, making it attractive for big multinational companies like Starbucks, Google and IBM to set up offices. Even rock stars like the Rolling Stones and U2 have taken advantage of Dutch tax shelters.

The same goes for Luxembourg, Bermuda, Ireland and the British Caribbean countries like the Cayman Islands. Along with the Netherlands, those places rank among the top destinations for foreign direct investment from the United States, according to a review of data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis that shows how entrenched tax avoidance strategies have become.

Read more: The Tax Attraction Between Starbucks and the Netherlands - NYTimes.com

Tax Evasion: "Our Bucks Not Starbucks" - Starbucks pays UK corporation tax for first time since 2009

Coffee giant Starbucks has paid euro 5.85 million in UK corporation tax - its first such tax payment since 2009 - the company has announced.

A company spokeswoman said it had listened to its customers and would pay another £5m later this year.

The move follows pressure from politicians and campaigners, and an agreement by world leaders last week to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance.

Starbucks has only reported taxable profit once in 15 years in the UK.

It announced late last year it would pay more corporation tax after a public outcry and an investigation by MPs .



Read more: BBC News - Starbucks pays UK corporation tax for first time since 2009

EU leaders talk tough on tackling Amazon, Google over taxes

Tax evasion and money laundering

Britain, France and Germany called for stricter rules to stop companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon aggressively avoiding taxes in austerity bitten Europe, while acknowledging they had done nothing unlawful.

At a summit to discuss energy and tax policy, the leaders of the three largest EU countries took theopportunity at news conferences to lament the impact of corporate tax avoidance, following several cases involving U.S. firms.

The issue has hit a nerve in Europe where many countries are cutting back on social spending and squeezing workers in order to reduce national deficits and debt.

Most recently a U.S. Senate report found that Apple Inc had paid just 2 percent tax on $74 billion in overseas income, largely by exploiting a loophole in Ireland's tax code.

"We cannot accept that a certain number of companies can put themselves in situations where they escape paying taxes in ways that are legal," French President Francois Hollande said.

"We must coordinate at a European level, harmonize our rules and come up with strategies to stop this."
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has put tax at the top of the agenda for a meeting of the G8 in Ireland next month, was equally clear about the need for coordination steps.

"There is a real chance of seeing the sort of international action that we need to fix this problem," he said. "You can't do it on your own, you have to have that international action and that is why I think today has been a bit of a breakthrough."

France and Britain in particular have grown concerned by the sheer scale of the legal tax schemes.


Read more: EU leaders talk tough on tackling Amazon, Google over taxes | Reuters

Netherlands has turned into a Super Cayman style Tax Haven as Yahoo, Dell Swell Netherlands’ $13 Trillion Tax Haven

Inside Reindert Dooves’s home, a 17th- century, three-story converted warehouse along the Zaan canal in suburban Amsterdam, a 21st-century Internet giant is avoiding taxes.

The bookkeeper’s home office doubles as the headquarters for a Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) offshore unit. Through this sun-filled, white- walled room, Yahoo has taken advantage of the law to quietly funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in global profits to island subsidiaries, cutting its worldwide tax bill.

The Yahoo arrangement illustrates that the Netherlands, in the heart of a continent better known for social welfare than corporate welfare, has emerged as one of the most important tax havens for multinational companies. Now, as a deficit-strapped Europe raises retirement ages and taxes on the working class, the Netherlands’ role as a $13 trillion relay station on the global tax-avoiding network is prompting a backlash.

The Dutch Parliament is scheduled to debate the fairness of its tax system today. Lawmakers from several parties, including members of the country’s governing coalition, say they want to remove a stain on the nation’s reputation.

“We should not be a tax haven,” said Ed Groot, a parliament member from the Labour Party, which along with the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy took power in November. Both ruling parties are “fed up with these so called PO Box companies,” he said. “If they go somewhere else we are not sorry at all because they spoil the name of Holland. Otherwise you can wait for retaliation measures and this we don’t want ".

Last month, the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, declared a war on tax avoidance and evasion, which it said costs the EU 1 trillion euros a year. The commission advised member states -- including the Netherlands -- to create tax-haven blacklists and adopt anti-abuse rules.

It also recommended reforms that could undermine the lure of the Netherlands, and hurt a spinoff industry that has mushroomed in and around Amsterdam to abet tax avoidance.

Attracted by the Netherlands’ lenient policies and extensive network of tax treaties, companies such as Yahoo, Google Inc. (GOOG), Merck & Co. and Dell Inc. have moved profits through the country. Using techniques with nicknames such as the “Dutch Sandwich,” multinational companies routed 10.2 trillion euros in 2010 through 14,300 Dutch “special financial units,” according to the Dutch Central Bank. Such units often only exist on paper, as is allowed by law.

Profit shifting into tax havens by corporations costs the U.S. $90 billion a year, according to Kimberly Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. The U.S. faces a projected budget deficit of almost $1 trillion in fiscal 2013.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -- which sets standards for how multinational companies allocate taxable income around the world -- is also tackling the issue. It’s discussing a proposal that could make it harder for companies to move profits through the Netherlands into island tax havens.

Read more: Yahoo, Dell Swell Netherlands’ $13 Trillion Tax Haven - Bloomberg

Starbucks, Amazon, Google face British (and EU) tax questions - by David Stringer

On Monday British lawmakers accused major multinational companies of aggressive tax avoidance, amid government calls for a global crackdown on firms that seek to evade taxes.

In sometimes bitter exchanges at a three-hour parliamentary committee hearing, legislators questioned Starbucks, Google and Amazon.com about the amount of tax they pay to the United Kingdom.

Lawmakers scoffed as Troy Alstead, Starbucks global chief financial officer, claimed the Seattle-based coffee giant had reported losses for all but one of the 15 years it has operated in Britain because of poor performance — and was not an attempt to minimize its taxes in Britain. “You have run the business for 15 years and are losing money and you are carrying on investing here. It just doesn’t ring true,” said Margaret Hodge, head of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

Alstead acknowledged to the panel that its taxable profits in the U.K. are calculated after royalties paid to its European headquarters in the Netherlands have been deducted. He said Starbucks had a special tax arrangement with the Dutch government covering its headquarters, but he declined to give details.
“Respectfully I can assure you there is no tax avoidance here,” Alstead told the panel.
Companies operating in Europe can base themselves in any of the 27 European Union nations, allowing them to take advantage of a particular country’s low tax rates.

Note EU-Digest: this "tax loophole game" by multi-national corporations operating in Europe can only be stopped by coordinated action of  EU-member countries and the European parliament. With little or no Government control or established guidelines multi-national corporations are presently exploiting the system to its fullest.

Read more: Starbucks, Amazon, Google face British tax questions | Business & Technology | The Seattle Times

Britain: US Coffee Giant Starbucks paid no tax on UK earnings in the past three years.

US coffee giant Starbucks has reportedly paid just euro 10.62 m in corporation tax during14 years of trading in Britain - and nothing in the last three years.

The American coffee firm is valued at euro 31 billion.

It generated over euro 3.71 billion billion of sales in the UK since 1998 but has paid less than 1% in corporation tax.

Its nearest European rival, Costa, owned by Whitbread, recorded euro 466m last year, compared to Starbucks' euro 492 m, but Costa's tax bill came to 18.52m, or 31% of its profits.

Starbucks, which has more than 700 outlets in the UK, said it has paid its "fair share of taxes" in full compliance with UK law and no authority had suggested otherwise.

The Seattle-based firm is the latest company to come under scrutiny for making a poor contribution to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) after Facebook and Google met similar criticism.

A four-month investigation by news agency Reuters discovered that Starbucks was able to cut income tax by paying fees to other parts of its global business, such as royalty payments for use of the brand.

This means Starbucks UK is effectively making a loss and therefore does not have to pay any corporation tax.

As a result, it has not broken any law. But Labour MP and tax campaigner Michael Meacher said Starbucks' practice is "profoundly against the interests of the countries where they operate and is extremely unfair... they are trying to play the taxman, game him. It is disgraceful".

This is one of the typical examples why the EU needs a uniform tax code so multi-national corporations can't play games games with local tax systems like Starbucks and others are presently doing.

EU-Digest