Over the weekend, the Daily Telegraph carried the story that McDonald's are moving their European headquarters to Geneva next year because of the Brown/Darling tax hikes on business.
It's telling that it wasn't more widely reported, really. Nobody's surprised, right..?
As the article makes clear, Maccas
joins other large US corporations that have based their European operations in Switzerland, including Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and Yahoo. Google also chose Zurich for its European headquarters, despite having a large office in the UK capital.
They could be there for the fountain, I suppose. Or maybe... maybe it's the tax.
Because after all, other
home-grown UK companies have also upped sticks in recent years, in search of more favourable tax regimes. The list includes Regus, the temporary office supplier, which has moved to Luxembourg, advertising giant WPP and pharmaceuticals company Shire which are both relocating their headquarters to Ireland, and Brit Insurance, which plans to move to the Netherlands. Investment company Henderson set up a new parent company in Ireland to pay less tax.
When will Labour learn that you can't slap business around without consequences? Or that we NEED business in this country..?
Feel free to add other examples of businesses sensibly escaping Brown's Britain in the comments.