In general I find Facebook to be one of the creepiest surveillance corporations. But in this case I’m willing to give the company a pass. Facebook has announced that it is giving each of its United Kingdom (UK) employees a $1.1 million bonus in order to avoid paying taxes:
Facebook is to award bonuses of £280 million ($396 million) to its U.K.-based staff over the next three years in a bid to offset the amount of tax it has to pay to the U.K. Treasury.
Each employee will receive an average of £775,000 ($1.1 million), which Facebook will list as a taxable expense.
This raises an interesting question. Who will win between the statists demanding Facebook to pay more taxes or the statists demanding Facebook pay its employees more. Since the same people are often demanding both this is probably causing some severe headaches.
But that’s not all! In addition to this trolling Facebook also threw in an additional complimentary troll:
The new tax blow is all the more frustrating for the British government after data emerged recently to show that the Treasury pays more to Facebook for advertising placement than it receives in taxes from the Silicon Valley giant.
Why is the UK Treasury paying Facebook for advertising? What does a State have to advertise? It makes its services compulsory for everybody. Either way, it’s nice to see Facebook draining some wealth away from the State. While Facebook’s employees will likely have to pay income taxes on their substantial bonus the amount the UK will receive will likely be far less than if Facebook paid what was being demanded of it directly. It also sends a terrific message.