>Let's turn it around. How would you go about taxing a corporation that didn't make much profit last year

From the article:

"[T]he firm also paid its 362 UK staff a total of £35.4m in share bonuses."

That says to me that it'd be worth trying to figure out how to reconcile that against "a pre-tax loss of £28.5m."

So you should not be entitled to bonuses when you work in the UK office because the UK office does not have enough revenue to make up for the cost of the workforce, but the same people in the SFO office should?

>So you should not be entitled to bonuses when you work in the UK office because the UK office does not have enough revenue to make up for the cost of the workforce, but the same people in the SFO office should?

1. I didn't say that.

2. What's to stop the SFO office issuing the bonuses?

> 2. What's to stop the SFO office issuing the bonuses?

That's basically what is happening? The company made a loss, so that money came from somewhere else to pay for it.

But those are shares. They have no monetary value until you try to draw a dividend or sell them, at which point you have to pay tax again.

The pre-tax loss is for the UK operation, not the global entity as a whole.

It seems that the real question is not about what Facebook UK's corporation tax bill should be but how we want to deal with global corporations as a whole and how we want to benefit from that relationship.

My gut feeling is that if you are dealing with the tiny arm of a very successful US company, you are not in much of a position to negotiate.