Shiny new technology

I've just been upgraded at work to use a Citrix terminal.   The advantage is that I can use all my programs from any computer anywhere, and it's all so much faster because rather than use my own PC to run local programs, I now dial in to the server which runs them for me :-)

Except... I only ever use Outlook, Internet Explorer and Word/Excel.  And my PC could run those all perfectly well, and I had web access to Outlook anyway.  So my home PC allowed me to do anything I'd ever want in any case.

And because it's now the server running the desktop for me, it runs it with the same settings as it uses for everyone, which means clumsy large icons and a strange blue-grey desktop.  Oh, and it's locked things down - I can't even move bookmarks around in IE any more, even if I can find them because for some reason they've locked away the ability to show the menu bar permanently.  I have to summon it with the alt key every time I want it, or else have the Favourites Bar permanently taking up half the desktop.

So: remote access I don't need, a speed boost of nil, all my customised layouts gone, and forced to use programs with mittens on, effectively.

Hurrah, I love progress!


PS: I did sneakily ask what would happen if I ignored Citrix and just used the programs I already have, which work better.  The IT chap looked shifty, and said that nothing would break.  He then said they'd probably be wiped sometime soon so I couldn't :-(

Or I could just use my own laptop and dial in through the firms' wi-fi to get to Outlook Web Access - I have my own Word and Excel, so could do the job better on my own hardware... :-)

Google tax dodging

More on the tax dodging front.   Now Google's getting flak for only paying £6m tax on revenues of £395m, which is 1.5% against a headline tax rate of 24%.

Only, the headline rate is based on profit, not revenue.  So that numbers is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.  £6m tax implies profit of £25m at 24% - although of course 24% is the current rate, not the one that applied to the year in question; and it's not clear if that's tax paid, or the tax charge in the accounts (which would include deferred tax - basically, the impact of the differences between accounts profit and taxable profit, most of which tend to defer the payment of tax as an incentive to start doing business)  so we now seem to have an icecream teacosy.

But let's get our handy gooey and play with those numbers anyway - £25m profit on turnover of £395m is what, 6%?  A moderately decent margin - a bit slim for a modern high-tech company, perhaps.  But then, what does Google actually *do* in the UK? The odd data centre or something?  All the value of the company comes from intellectual property, and I don't think that gets developed here.  Data hosting is pretty low risk, so you wouldn't really expect a very high margin.

So, er, sounds like Google's playing fair, based on those numbers.

Now what I'd be interested in is the transfer pricing situation.  What does the revenue represent?  I suspect that it's just a commission on advertising sales.  So maybe the thing to do is question whether the revenue figures are at arm's length - but that sort of enquiry takes HMRC years to finish and no-one publishes the results anyway.  I'd be amazed if Google haven't been quite aggressive about their internal pricing, but then I'd also be amazed (having been there and talked to them about similar companies, that is) if HMRC aren't pushing back quite hard so the final position should be reasonable. 

So, at the moment once again all we we have is a number labelled  "Tax" in a vague way, which is much smaller than another number picked at random, and this makes Tax Avoidance.  *Sigh *