20/10/16 - Netflix paid less than £400,000 in UK corporation tax last year (12)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/13/netflix-uk-corporation-tax

This article is about how Netflix had paid less than £400,000 in UK corporation tax in 2015. In addition, it also says how Netflix have made such high profits especially in the UK; the UK is the land where most users are subscribed to Netflix apart from the US. Overall, Netflix have roughly 80 million subscribers and are on the track to making around £7 billion in global revenue. A spokesman of Netflix also talks about how Netflix is becoming more than an online streaming institution and are starting to engage with films and creating projects with various films such as Brad Pitt's War Machine movie. The article also states that in 2014, Netflix only had 1 UK employee but now how got 13; each UK employee earns around £200,000 a year. So, the spokesman then argues that despite them may not spending that much on 'corporation tax' as a whole in the UK, they still spent a lot of money in other areas of taxation. 

• The UK is believed to be the biggest market for Netflix outside the US. The company, which is on track to make $8bn (£7bn) in global revenues this year and has more than 80 million subscribers, says it employs just 13 staff in the UK.
• Netflix paid €441,775 in UK corporation tax in 2015, after it booked a €47,986 tax credit having filed a loss of €261,000 the previous year.
• The company, which is estimated by Ampere Analysis to have almost 6 million UK subscribers, made a pre-tax profit of £1.8m (€1.99m) last year.
• A total of €2.78m (£2.5m) was spent on wages, salaries, social security and other pension costs, meaning each employee received an average of €214,000 (£193,000).

In my opinion, I believe that what Netflix did, which is not paying the correct amount of corporation tax is wrong and considering how much they may, this is a small amount of money they would only need to pay. Even though what they are doing is not illegal, it is still wrong and very unfair to everyone else. The public who do pay tax, most likely will pay the whole amount required and considering that they do not have the 'major' money that Netflix do, they still manage to pay it. Therefore, even though that what Netflix are doing isn't lawfully wrong, it is still very unfair and despite them pay other types of tax, they should still pay what they are required to and not try to avoid not paying it.