I know linking directly to image files is in some circles the hip thing to do, but I don't get, as it creates a frustrating dead end if one is interested in more information on the subject that may be on the page with the image or available from following a link on the page.
Ingvar Kamprad is the prototype of Calvinist, hard working, humble and low expenses man. When he came here to Spain, to visit IKEA's stores, he used regular line airplane, and public bus transport.
IMHO, he don't want to make his family stupid rich(think Gucci family,wasting on luxury, power, drugs, sex, fights for the money and murders between them) when he is dead, but wants them to have something they can make a life from.
> Ingvar Kamprad is the prototype of Calvinist, hard working, humble and low expenses man.
Ebenezer Scrooge was hard-working and low-expense too. Would he have been a great and charitable man if he had just been a little less arrogant?
> IMHO, he don't want to make his family stupid rich(think Gucci family,wasting on luxury, power, drugs, sex, fights for the money and murders between them) when he is dead, but wants them to have something they can make a life from.
How many billions, exactly, does that require? (Feel free to round to the nearest hundred million.)
I wonder: if IKEA had been paying income taxes all along, how much less in personal income taxes would they have generated?
Corporate income is the single source of income most likely to be productively reinvested, because corporations function more like homo economicus than any other kind of entity. And since they're entirely owned by either a) people, or b) charities, it doesn't make sense to talk about taxing corporations instead of individuals--rather, you should refer to corporate income tax as a tax on individuals and nonprofits, instead of just individuals.
From that perspective, IKEA pays the socially optimal corporate income tax: zero.
Citizens also vote. I've never understood why people consider 'corporate citizenship' so meaningful; it's a terse description of a legal hack, not some profound statement about what a corporation is.
Corporations are persons, but they are not citizens.
For the sake of comparison, cities, states, ships and foreign nationals are also persons, but not citizens. Only human beings are considered "natural persons".
While it was not the thrust of the investigation, it did come to light that many rich people were using foundations as a way to shield themselves from taxes or to retain control of a company via a two-tier voting class for shares.
I don't know whether anything has changed or not, but given that it is an old article something may have.
When I first read an article, I assume it is current. I only realized this article wasn't current because it mentioned that Japan opened its first Ikea store "in April", and I knew it had Ikea for several years at which point I checked the date.
I think it's a shame they are using these kinds of aggressive tax planning tactics, while still marketing themselves as being Swedish/Nordic. And to put this view in context, Sweden does not have the same social system as the US. But this would be aggressive even for an American company.
Let's just say that everyone up here doesn't love our high taxes. :-)
You could of course wish that IKEA would pay its corporate taxes like a good corporate citizen, but maybe the same traits that makes Ingvar Kamprad want to save expenses on everything, including taxes, is the same trait that has also made IKEA the huge success it is?
Expressen recently listed the "top" tax-payers in Sweden [1]. What's interesting is that the second wealthiest person in Sweden after Kamprad, H&M owner Stefan Perssson, tops the list and pays more tax than the ten following people combined. It's also interesting to find one of the investors in Skype at #4 and one of the founders of MySQL at #11.
If I understand US law correctly, a non-profit corporation is allowed to own a for-profit corporation (just like it can own any other asset), but that doesn’t exempt the for-profit corporation from taxes; it just means that all the after-tax profits go into the non-profit’s coffers. And when a non-profit corporation pays its employees or directors, that money becomes taxable income. Does Dutch law work the same way? How much are the Ikea companies actually saving from the taxman this way?
I think the implication is that the main for-profit companies make virtually no profit at all. The "profit" is emitted via the franchise commission which is handled as an expense. What exactly happens in the INGKA foundation isn't clear to me. Presumably the non-profit actually pays the designers who create the products, handing the designs back over to IKEA.
I think the root of the problem exists in the simple fact that tax laws are different in various states/countries. Accountants/lawyers are paid to figure them out, and rewarded well when they find benefits to the myriad of rules and regs. I was even employed once to optimize a large corporation with 100s of entities in different taxing regions. I enjoyed the work, but it was evil (only looking back in retrospect of course).
Where's the injustice? I doubt the Kamprad family has cost the Swedish welfare state what the state wants to tax them. He's merely doing what's best for him, instead of subsidizing the education and medical care of other parents' children. Frankly, I don't see any injustice.
While non-profit foundations belonging to US politicians typically don't own shares of corporations, it's very hard to see these non-profits doing any charitable output; a lot of these organizations just have huge administration costs: plane tickets, dinners, and so on
