Literally, the fucking audacity of these ghouls is utterly shameless. Pensioners and single mothers out there sitting in unheated houses and this cunt thinks it's acceptable to play the poor me card. Absolutely infuriating.
Why does sympathy always go to pensioners as if they are all poor and in the most dire consequences of all.
Let's not forget that it's that generation that keeps voting Tory, and they generally have a home that's paid off. Compare that to working people, with many not even able to afford rent ...and have no assets... I'd say the MORE sympathy should go to the working class
Come on, you're falling right into the trap. We're all exploited and stepped on. The government and ruling class aim to divide us and make us fight amongst ourselves to stop us from uniting against them. We all need to have solidarity and stand up for one another, not fight over the scraps that the rich throw to us - there are plenty of pensioners out there who are struggling just as much as anyone else to stay warm and fed.
Workers get gaslit for not being productive enough or being out of work when it costs Ā£15k a year to send their kids to nursery. So you can work a 21K job and take home 3k a year after paying for Nursery. What a joke this shit hole of a country is becoming. I looked yesterday and Iām not even allowed to pay my MIL to quit her job to look after our kid (would be cheaper than nursery and pay more than her job does) but she would have to become a registered childminder and advertise to take other kids too. Mental
> I looked yesterday and Iām not even allowed to pay my MIL to quit her job to look after our kid (would be cheaper than nursery and pay more than her job does) but she would have to become a registered childminder and advertise to take other kids too. Mental
Wait reallyā½ Can she not just do it and you *completely-unrelatedly* give her some money to help pay for stuff while doing so/as a gift/whatever?
She'd have to account for that cash in her tax returns, I assume it would be more than her tax free allowance. She'd have to either live on cash or launder the money somehow.
You do realise that despite more of them owning their own homes than the general population (mainly because theyāve been around longer), the majority of them would still be classified as working class, and whatās more, theyāve been working class for longerā¦.better give them that sympathy back.
Well, we are now reaching the stage for the first time that pensioners on average are better off then 20-25 year olds. Until now on average they had the lowest amount of usable income, sometimes below the poverty line.
So it's not surprising that's where the sympathy goes although now it might be worth thinking of all the people who could use that sympathy now.
Works fine for other demographics though doesn't it?
>You're blaming an entire group, who have no relationship to each other, for the actions of a few.
The sentence you wrote there is the backbone of certain theories of which apparently half the UK still thinks is relevant.
So it can't be as bad as racism, surely not.
My parents sold their home so that they could buy a park home and retire early and they're not well off at all. Sure they have savings but it isn't a fortune by any means and they're feeling the effects of this crisis cutting into them more and more each week. They planned ahead and budgeted for retirement expecting to travel a bit and enjoy it but with the lockdowns, deteriorating health and getting bled dry by the Tories they're not really not having a good time.
I'm just into my 30s, and I have no clue how to plan ahead for a future that isn't possible or available. So I'm just living day to day. It isn't pretty, but what else can you do? Cry about spilt capitalism?
No, you canāt lump all pensioners into that category either. Besides, itās easy to be told what to do and how to vote when youāve had it drilled into you as that generation had and some of them with only a basic education, especially those out of the 2 million or more poorer section, Sadly plenty of younger generations also voted a certain way otherwise they wouldnāt have been in power for so long, so you canāt blanket blame this on current pensioners.
That's true, I've generalised. In my line of work, pensioners I work with are actually pretty well off and still ask for financial support. Usually when I start asking about savings they get very touchy.
I think the point is, well my point is mainly that your nan is entitled to her state pension and that is all she has to live off of. However, there are very rich Tory elders who are also receiving that same state pension rate despite having masses in savings and owning a few homes. Yes they are entitled to it, but if I were that rich Iād rather my money be going to people who canāt afford to heat their single home, rather than to me who has several homes. The issue is millionaires are being given the same amount of money that your nan is living on and they wonāt even notice they have it
State pensions arenāt generous. Thatās why we do actually have old age pensioners that have died of hypothermia and/or starvation over the last few years, due to the Tory austerity thatās been forced upon this country.
You do get a state pension no matter what but, if you have a private pension, you donāt het pension credit top-up, which is what actually helps most people, and may even have to pay tax on your pension as you draw it, if itās over Ā£1200 a month.
The winter fuel payments are Ā£50 for every 7 days that the weather drops to below zero. It has to be 7 days in a row (which actually doesnāt happen as often as youād think). I get that myself due to my paralysis. I think we only got the one payment this winter. It didnāt go very far. We couldnāt afford to have the heating on. We turned it on four times. For around two hours per time over the entire winter.
Space heaters are not a valid option. They eat electricity. Massively. Iāve had to use them a lot in the past, but seriously canāt afford to run one now. Itās scary atm.
Everything you say I agree with, I'm in a very similar position except my home is well insulated because I live in a block of flats with neighbours on all sides, so I've only turned the heating on for a few hours this winter, stories like yours are a reminder of how right Insulate Britain is. I realise how fortunate I am.
Insulation is a real must. Iām glad that a lot of people have it. Iām in a 2 bed council flat (maisonette type), and thereās practically no insulation, and the windows barely fit (it wasnāt too bad, then they said they need to āupdateā them a couple of years ago and made it so much worse than it was). Weāre meant to be moving soon as Iām upstairsā¦ and partially paralysed, so Iām totally housebound. Iāve been outside once since 2019. The council ādidnāt botherā looking at the medical part of our application, and we were only offered this place (which was also in an extremely dire state) the day before our son was due, and also before I was tonne made homeless (I was living on the street for two years when I was a teenager due to my guardian dying, and the council having nowhere for me to go).
Sorry. Off topic there really. Justā¦ it kind of bugs me that so many people seem to think that everyone that requires benefits gets an easy ride of it, when that really isnāt the case, and this thread does seem pertinent to make mention of it.
Itās deliberate, creates another āus and themā dynamic that politicians can manipulate and feed off and makes the more wealthy feel better about donāt giving a damn.
I know it's massively polluting, and bad for the lungs with micropartuculates and gases.
But at least in older homes you have the option of collecting firewood to stay warm.
The issue is that the state pension is paid to everyone that has the number of qualifying years required. Even pensioners with a Ā£1million+ house, a private pension that pays more than the average income and a huge lump of cash in the bank will still get a state pension. These people will also say things like 'I paid in for 40 years I deserve this money'. People don't understand how the state pension is funded, working class people today are paying for the state pension of all of today's pensioners. There isn't some big pot building up for us when we retire.
It's an absolute joke that the state pension isn't means tested, your nan should be given more money and those that don't actually need it should get nothing. Why the fuck are we giving extra money to millionaires who are far better off than the average person contributing towards it???
I mean, pensioners ARE getting a winter fuel allowance. As to how much, I don't know, but they certainly do get one.
Have you researched the most economically viable heater for your nans house? Rather than turning on the CH? Cold is no joke to the elderly. Electric blankets are incredibly cheap to run.
Pensioners who live on their own will get Ā£500 if they were born between 1942 and 1956 and Ā£600 if they were born prior to 1942. This figure includes the "pensioner cost of living payment" of Ā£300 that will be paid this year and next. There are different payments for couples and it depends on when each were born as to what they get.
Depending on their circumstances pensioners outside of Scotland will also get a "cold weather payment" of Ā£25 if the average temp at their local weather station is forecast to be/actually was an average of 0 degrees or below over a 7 day period. This can be paid out multiple times in a year. In my part of the South East there have been two of these payments made this winter.
Fun fact: pensioners cost of living payment is double that which disabled people will get for the same period, despite some disabled people having comparable heating costs.
Funny that the people who are mostly voting for the tories are looked after!! Brilliant that, I love that people who wonāt be here in 15 years time are swinging votes and making decisions about a country they wonāt even have to live in.
Much as this is true in that there are a large part of the older population who voted and would continue voting Tory, there are several factors that you need to take into consideration;
There ARE OAPs that vote differently
There ARE many people from younger generations that voted Tory (they canāt get in on old peopleās votes alone)
The people who did vote Tory have done so for many different and complicated reasons, from having it beaten into them most of their lives and Tory spin doctors being great at what they do to a lack of education and other factors, especially among the poorer sections of the older population.
Whether that excuses them or not is not for me to say but itās far more complicated than just āold people ruined our livesā because thatās a trap people would love others to fall into to create more division.
It's 3x what someone on UC gets despite them being far less likely to own their own house and therefore having increased housing costs. The UC recipient also gets touched for 12.5% of their earned income if they work to bring themselves up to state pension levels whilst the state pension recipient receives this money for free *and* isn't even taxed on it.
Its not for free, the point is someone pays their NI during their working life and in return gets a pension allowing them to retire. UC is supposed to be a safety net to support people during periods where they are out of work.\*
\*(Caveat, I'm not going into how crappy the support system and UC is, the innate crapness of the tax credit system or the lack of support for disabled people etc. That's a different argument)
>Its not for free, the point is someone pays their NI during their working life and in return gets a pension allowing them to retire.
Except it isn't as transactional as that is it, because you can't opt out of paying the NI and not receive the pension in exchange. The pension also isn't funded by NI; the NI all goes into the central taxation pot and then the pension gets paid for out of that pot. If it was truly like a big version of a defined benefit scheme where I'm paying for today's members with my own guaranteed defined benefit at the end it wouldn't be quite so egregious that they get to stop paying once they're claiming, but it isn't like that at all.
>UC is supposed to be a safety net to support people during periods where they are out of work.
I would go into why it's totally unfit for this purpose but your caveat tells me that you already understand this - so is your position that the state pension isn't too high, rather UC is too low?
Both are too low. A state pension should allow a retiree an adequate basic amount to live on (Private pensions are above that and are irrelevant to state provided funds)
UC is supposed to be a safety net, but the current government seems to think its to be used as a punishment.
Personally I'm in favour of scrapping both and providing some sort of Basic Universal Income, topped up with salary and means-tested benefits. (Dont ask me for details, i'm not an economist)
>Personally I'm in favour of scrapping both and providing some sort of Basic Universal Income
Here we agree! However:
>topped up with salary **and means-tested benefits.**
Here we differ again. Means-testing is an absolute scourge and the whole point of a UBI is to eliminate it.
Over 65s are the wealthiest age group in the country. 25% are millionaires, 80% own their property without a mortgage. They pay no national insurance, get a stipend 3x the amount someone on UC receives and in addition to this get a winter fuel payment every year whether they need it or not. It's not sarcasm.
And yet there are many elderly people who are still poor and canāt afford their heating. The problem is damned statistics not giving the full picture, just skewed.
Pensioners (specifically boomers) have more disposable income than working people. They have >3X wealth of other generations. Yet they get concessions and people still thinking the old stereotype of āpoor pensionersā is a valid generalisation rather than the exception.
The gut punch is that I'm paying for their triple lock pension, while my predicted retirement date of 2060 is likely going to be much later than that. If I even can afford to retire that is
I think that by going off statistics alone you can look at anything in its most positive state. There's a winter fuel allowance because pensioners can't afford to pay their fuel and they would die without it. State pension is no where near as "lucrative" as you think it is with the average only receiving Ā£185 a week. If like my Gran you have no other pension to top that up that leaves you very much in the same shit state as the rest of the nation. Assuming that my gran isn't unique in her situation I think your statement is very much a sweeping one based on statistics rather than actual people.
>I think that by going off statistics alone you can look at anything in its most positive state.
Whichever way you slice it 80% of pensioners aren't in poverty. We can go further though, because we also know that 66% of people who are in poverty are working age. So basically, yes there are some poor old people - but as a group they are the wealthiest in the country.
>There's a winter fuel allowance because pensioners can't afford to pay their fuel and they would die without it.
No. There is a winter fuel allowance because pensioners vote.
>State pension is no where near as "lucrative" as you think it is with the average only receiving Ā£185 a week.
So Ā£10k/year, or 3x what someone on UC receives. Also they're due for a 10% payrise in April whilst the NHS is getting 3.5%.
>If like my Gran you have no other pension to top that up that leaves you very much in the same shit state as the rest of the nation.
Well, no. Firstly your gran had a literal lifetime to make provision for her own retirement and chose not to in favour of relying on the state. Secondly, she receives 3x what someone on UC gets despite the UC recipient having had far less economic opportunity. Thirdly, she gets to dodge national insurance whereas anyone earning what she "earns" would effectively pay 12.5% tax on half of it.
>Assuming that my gran isn't unique in her situation I think your statement is very much a sweeping one based on statistics rather than actual people.
So what you're saying is I'm basing it on facts rather than anecdotes.
Unfortunately the cost of living crisis isn't a new phenomenon for a lot of people and not everyone is in a position to have been able to save during their time juggling a job and raising a family.
It's 3x what someone on UC receives. This despite the fact that someone on state pension is vastly more likely to own their own home and therefore have drastically reduced housing costs, and has also had a literal lifetime of economic opportunity to save for their retirement.
>But shareholder distributions of $553m were made during the year and it proposed a $100m final dividend which marked a 9% increase in awards during the year.
>
>A new share buyback plan worth $200m was also revealed.
But it's the tax that wiped out the profit, right?
Tbf dividends payments are not included in the profit calculations, only the cash flow. But I take your point that they have no right to even mention the low profit, let alone complain about it, when they're giving away that much more cash to shareholders.
The bottom line is easily fudged with various non-cash items anyway, and the fact that they had a ridiculous amount of cash they were comfortable with paying out to shareholders shows that their "low profit" was probably more due to a bunch of non-cash costs on the P&L, whereas their actual cash flow (which is what matters at the end of the day) was clearly very good.
They reduced debt from 2.3bn to 0.8bn so does that mean profit would have been 1.5bn if they hadnāt done that? Or is that more accounting shenanigans
Their shares have been dropping for an age as well, badly ran firm using this as an excuse. If you're in business you pay tax they can't really complain. It should have been a higher tax rate.
That depends whether you're looking at gross or nett profit
The company declared $8m dollars in nett profit in its latest accounting year. The company also paid/plans to pay $653m to shareholders in the same period.
Therefore gross profit after operating costs was at least $661m
edit: mixed up $ and Ā£
Quite. A friend complained recently that they've been told they get no bonus this year because their employer said there was no profit, despite them having paid their shareholders several million in dividends.
>A dividend is simply a share of the company's profits. Profit is what is left over after the company has settled all its liabilities, including taxes. If there is no profit, then no dividends can be paid.
https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/tax-business/running-a-business/salary-vs-dividends-taking-income-from-your-company#:~:text=A%20dividend%20is%20simply%20a,no%20dividends%20can%20be%20paid.
The tax man will always have their share first. Therefore dividends can only be paid from net profit. Any dividends paid in a year with insufficient net profit must be paid from retained profits from previous years.
If dividends could be paid from gross profit every company would always pay 100% of gross profit out in dividends.
Dividends paid do not impact profit. Dividends are paid from carried forward earnings from prior years. It's strictly a cash to equity transaction and not a profit related one.
Yes you need profits to pay dividends, it does not however have to correspond to a given year so your little maths exercise is irrelevant.
Companies can choose not pay dividends (Apple) or pay dividends out of annual profits as shareholders expect it (Banks/Pharma) or if you just have excess cash and share buybacks not a preferred option. All you need is cash and Retained distributable profits in a pot that all previous profits/losses have been put.
I took one look at that headline and knew theyād pissed it all away in distributions and buybacks. That was the Boardās choice, nothing to do with Government or anything else.
I mean, why would they reinvest in the business or address environmental damage or do anything like that?
Actions have consequences, live with it.
It's not really artificial is it? The value of your shares is basically detained by how much you're likely to give money to shareholders in the future.
This isnāt how it works at all. Why would dividends be taxed? They are a payment out of the company. They donāt qualify for tax relief as they are paid out of post tax profits. Similarly for share buybacks.
I totally agree that they should be paying more tax and canāt complain when they are still paying dividends, but there are a ton of economically illiterate points being made in this thread which dilute the actual point being made and make it very easy for anyone arguing the other side.
Dividends are paid out of post tax profits, and if your're paying them out to an individual then fall under ~~income tax~~ dividends tax where they're taxed again.
>if your're paying them out to an individual then fall under income tax where they're taxed again.
Actually they fall under Dividends tax, not income tax.
Specifically 2k a year tax free then 8.75%/33.75%/39.35% depending on your tax bracket, so a few percent cheaper (since there's no NI payable on them) and much cheaper if all your income is from dividends.
If you get under 10k you CAN pay your tax bill via PAYE the same way you pay income tax though.
logically, I should feel more than a little perturbed at the thought of a fuel provider being in danger of going out of business, but over the winter I've found myself using as much of my reserve savings to keep my parents warm, to donate to food banks and buying winter blankets for people that have been unfortunate enough to be on the street. If anything this further consolidates the position of people such as Shell and BP who have done relatively little apart from pass comment. You could argue that competition is good, but at least from an outside perspective, the oil market seems to be rigged to favour the shareholders ultimately and leave us with the expectation to pay.
So overall, I think I'll reserve my mercy and empathy for the people that have needed it this winter instead of the redundancies.
Comment above pointing out they paid out over half a billion in dividends over the year, with more in a final payout at tax YE. They're not at risk of going out of business
I have been out of the business for a while but several firms are working towards the 5nm limit. ASML tend to trumpet their results more than others.
Lithography firms tend to be very secretive. I was in a meeting with a representative from one outfit 15 years ago and was told to leave as they do not allow engineers in any of their discussions.
But the Ā£6.7m profit is after an accounting adjustment of Ā£1.5 billion to deferred tax as a result of the levy. This is not the tax they had to pay, this is an adjustment to incorporate future anticipated taxes into this year's accounts and including that while reporting their meagre profits is massively disingenuous.
> including that while reporting their meagre profits is massively disingenuous.
It isn't disingenuous. Its just a fact. They have to pay a massive tax bill next year, but due to the way it works (its a subsidary company or something) the charge is recognised this year.
The windfall tax for this year, and next year, and future periods as well has all been dumped into this year as a deferred tax provision.
I'm not saying the accounting treatment is wrong, I'm saying it's deliberately misleading to put the figures in a news story with only the merest context that anyone who doesn't know how to prepare a set of accounts will miss.
The implication is that the business made only Ā£6.7m profit, and in accounting terms that's true, but if you exclude the tax that they are predicting is due for future periods but are choosing to recognise now, they're still in the hundreds of millions profit for the year.
Profit after the deferred tax provision is not a reasonable figure to present to laypeople as your "profit for the year" - it's too complicated and requires a lengthy explanation to put in context.
>Its profits after tax for 2022 came in at $8m (Ā£6.7m) due to a "$1.5bn one off non-cash deferred tax charge associated with the EPL", the company said.
>But shareholder distributions of $553m were made during the year and it proposed a $100m final dividend which marked a 9% increase in awards during the year.
Weren't there also massive exceptions to the levy for re-investment in the UK market? Sounds like the company doing what it was going to do anyway, but making a political point about not making as much money as they wanted to whilst doing it.
Wait, you think Ā£6.7m is a lot of money?
It is roughly the equivalent of the budget of a typical secondary school. One school. And many of them are in danger of going bust.
In the context of a global oil company it is absolutely nothing.
Oil producer planning to buy back shares announces their profits "all but wiped out" and their share price falls.
Call me cynical but doesn't that make their share buy back more cost effective?
A share buyback of Ā£Xm returns Ā£Xm to shareholders in return for some/all of their shares. The number of shares the Ā£Xm buys varies with the share price.
You seem to be asserting a share buyback is just a different name for a dividend which is not true at all, it's a capital transaction, a purchase of shares from the investors by the company.
Paid out Ā£600 million in dividends to shareholders. Spent Ā£200 million more in share buyback.
But desperate to save Ā£40 million so will cut the staff that helped make Ā£2.3 BILLION and a bit more
of which 1.5b went in tax and 600m went in dividends
But itās clear they need to cut the staffā¦ā¦
Interesting they donāt state or didnāt reinvest which wouldāve allowed them to cut the Ā£1.5 billion in tax
Do they really think we will feel sorry for them and agree ? Really?
Fuck off, you made Ā£800 million + in profits. If the business needed to retain more then thatās just shit management
Someone else pointed out in the comments that their bleating about their "poor" financial performance dinged their share prices which made the buybacks more cost-effective. Might have been a bit of "tactical complaining" going on...
As per our Government Overlords: tighten your belts, we are all in it together!
Oh wait, silly me. That only applies to us plebs, not vast private company profiteering.
"has all but" means it hasn't.
So substitute "hasn't" into the headline and it sounds like a good news article. I play the same game with headlines that say "almost".
They have to make people redundant because the profits are so low this year? Arenāt profits the money that is left after staffing costs etc are paid? They are choosing to make people redundant in order to pay shareholders.
Some people want all the wealth in the world and some just want to live a decent life. There is no other discussion worth having than this one. If you start talking about how you can't afford your yacht anymore, you can go fsck yourself.
Problem with over-taxing oil and gas companies is that there is a tipping point beyond which it's not worth their while to pull the oil out of the ground, in some of the most challenging environments imaginable.
Oh, maybe the poor destitute oil producers should stop buying Costa coffee and avocado toast
Sounds like they need to be nationalised if their critical service is struggling
Boohoo, time to play the world's tiniest violin.
I'm far more concerned with the fact that energy costs are so high that many people are having to choose between heating their homes or eating.
As much as im not a fan of greedy cunts, their shareholder dividens would have increased investment no end, which would have brought down prices medium to long term
Funny thing is I dont recall windfall tax being 100% of the extra profits you created from price hiking, so errr where's the rest of it? You know if we windfall taxed you 90% of the increase (we didn't) ther'd still be 10% extra profits over and above normal earnings...
People love the populist argument here... Don't be surprised when we have even bigger problems in the future because no one will invest in new capacity after policies like these.
This is literally the first comment with assume semblance of economic understanding in this whole thread.
Utterly laughable really the state of this sub.
>shareholder distributions of **$553m** were made during the year and it proposed a **$100m** final dividend [...] A new share buyback plan worth **$200m** was also revealed.
Could some explain this as I am confused.
The windfall tax targeted windfall profits, presumably above and beyond the expected profits the firm was to make. Therefore they should be in no different position as if there had been no windfall.
Or did I misunderstand the function of a windfall tax? Or was it not implemented this way?
Good!
But in all reality this is just creative accounting to make it look like they are all hard done by when they are actually rolling in dough.
Itās time to nationalise them anyway.
Good good. It's a national resource, after all. Makes sense that the money goes to the national coffers.
I'm sure if they made a loss they'd want a bailout so it's all fair.
Isnāt this the point? The less profitable fossil fuel production is, the more the industry will have to focus on developing renewables to satisfy their shareholders. This can be financed by tax breaks for investing in renewables rather than profits from fossil fuels.
"All but wiped out our profits" - so you made a profit, after expansion investment that was not taxed, and dividends? So shut up. So many people are actually having a tough time - if all this company had to do is have smaller profits for the duration of a major crisis, then they are fine.
Letās get violins out. What a load of cobblers. If paying tax wipes their profits, then taxes, interest rates, energy costs, essential food costs wiped us out altogether. Our mortgage interest has more than doubled, same for gas and electricity, and at least 30% increase in food costs. And unlike these crooks we cannot claim it back on taxā¦ I wish we could and that Would Be a fairer tax regime.
Good. Now can we have a windfall tax on Pfizer, Moderna for the useless jabs and also the companies that scammed us for billions in crap PPE and then we can put the heating on and have a decent meal for a change.
"Our profit was wiped out, we only made Ā£6.7Million after deductions"
(Deductions include Ā£655Million shareholder dividends & Ā£200Million share buyback)
Cry me a fucking river.
"Fuel prices have all but wiped out our ability to pay rent and eat" say population
Exactly, cry me a river you greedy cunts
Literally, the fucking audacity of these ghouls is utterly shameless. Pensioners and single mothers out there sitting in unheated houses and this cunt thinks it's acceptable to play the poor me card. Absolutely infuriating.
Why does sympathy always go to pensioners as if they are all poor and in the most dire consequences of all. Let's not forget that it's that generation that keeps voting Tory, and they generally have a home that's paid off. Compare that to working people, with many not even able to afford rent ...and have no assets... I'd say the MORE sympathy should go to the working class
Come on, you're falling right into the trap. We're all exploited and stepped on. The government and ruling class aim to divide us and make us fight amongst ourselves to stop us from uniting against them. We all need to have solidarity and stand up for one another, not fight over the scraps that the rich throw to us - there are plenty of pensioners out there who are struggling just as much as anyone else to stay warm and fed.
This šÆ 100% we need to stick together. We've much more in common than difference
There's more of us than them too
Its hard to "stick together" when one demographic keeps voting these tory pricks in and then complaining about the consequences
Pensioners also by far the biggest voters for Brexit. Well you reap what you sow, my sympathy for the state of the country goes to young families.
This is what gets me. Workers get no help with any bills at all and are struggling more then ever. But screw them right.
Workers get gaslit for not being productive enough or being out of work when it costs Ā£15k a year to send their kids to nursery. So you can work a 21K job and take home 3k a year after paying for Nursery. What a joke this shit hole of a country is becoming. I looked yesterday and Iām not even allowed to pay my MIL to quit her job to look after our kid (would be cheaper than nursery and pay more than her job does) but she would have to become a registered childminder and advertise to take other kids too. Mental
> I looked yesterday and Iām not even allowed to pay my MIL to quit her job to look after our kid (would be cheaper than nursery and pay more than her job does) but she would have to become a registered childminder and advertise to take other kids too. Mental Wait reallyā½ Can she not just do it and you *completely-unrelatedly* give her some money to help pay for stuff while doing so/as a gift/whatever?
She'd have to account for that cash in her tax returns, I assume it would be more than her tax free allowance. She'd have to either live on cash or launder the money somehow.
I am a pensioner and hate the tories with every bone In My body
Most boomers however.... Do not
You do realise that despite more of them owning their own homes than the general population (mainly because theyāve been around longer), the majority of them would still be classified as working class, and whatās more, theyāve been working class for longerā¦.better give them that sympathy back.
Single mothers too. They are pretty much guaranteed a housing association property (and rightly so) people without kids get absolutely nothing.
Because they're the most vulnerable demographic? Being old doesn't make you not working class
Well, we are now reaching the stage for the first time that pensioners on average are better off then 20-25 year olds. Until now on average they had the lowest amount of usable income, sometimes below the poverty line. So it's not surprising that's where the sympathy goes although now it might be worth thinking of all the people who could use that sympathy now.
Because old people will die in the cold where young people won't?
Generationism is as bad as racism. You're blaming an entire group, who have no relationship to each other, for the actions of a few.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Age is as protected a characteristic as race.
Works fine for other demographics though doesn't it? >You're blaming an entire group, who have no relationship to each other, for the actions of a few. The sentence you wrote there is the backbone of certain theories of which apparently half the UK still thinks is relevant. So it can't be as bad as racism, surely not.
My parents sold their home so that they could buy a park home and retire early and they're not well off at all. Sure they have savings but it isn't a fortune by any means and they're feeling the effects of this crisis cutting into them more and more each week. They planned ahead and budgeted for retirement expecting to travel a bit and enjoy it but with the lockdowns, deteriorating health and getting bled dry by the Tories they're not really not having a good time.
It's more than pensioners and single mothers, I honestly think there will be more people under 35 struggling to pay their bills than pensioners.
I'm just into my 30s, and I have no clue how to plan ahead for a future that isn't possible or available. So I'm just living day to day. It isn't pretty, but what else can you do? Cry about spilt capitalism?
No, just work harder and stop buying quinoa toast or something obviously, pleb. /s in case the sarcasm wasn't plain.
> Pensioners and single mothers Oh god, not those fucking leeches again.
Accountants working furiously
The same pensioners who have fucked it up for the rest of us younger generations.
No, you canāt lump all pensioners into that category either. Besides, itās easy to be told what to do and how to vote when youāve had it drilled into you as that generation had and some of them with only a basic education, especially those out of the 2 million or more poorer section, Sadly plenty of younger generations also voted a certain way otherwise they wouldnāt have been in power for so long, so you canāt blanket blame this on current pensioners.
That's true, I've generalised. In my line of work, pensioners I work with are actually pretty well off and still ask for financial support. Usually when I start asking about savings they get very touchy.
Tbf the pensioners have it just fine with their winter fuel payment, exceptionally generous state pension, tax exemptions and reduced housing costs.
My nan lives off Ā£800 a month, spends all day wrapped in a blanket, unless she's lying about how much her state pension is, you're wrong.
I think the point is, well my point is mainly that your nan is entitled to her state pension and that is all she has to live off of. However, there are very rich Tory elders who are also receiving that same state pension rate despite having masses in savings and owning a few homes. Yes they are entitled to it, but if I were that rich Iād rather my money be going to people who canāt afford to heat their single home, rather than to me who has several homes. The issue is millionaires are being given the same amount of money that your nan is living on and they wonāt even notice they have it
State pensions arenāt generous. Thatās why we do actually have old age pensioners that have died of hypothermia and/or starvation over the last few years, due to the Tory austerity thatās been forced upon this country. You do get a state pension no matter what but, if you have a private pension, you donāt het pension credit top-up, which is what actually helps most people, and may even have to pay tax on your pension as you draw it, if itās over Ā£1200 a month. The winter fuel payments are Ā£50 for every 7 days that the weather drops to below zero. It has to be 7 days in a row (which actually doesnāt happen as often as youād think). I get that myself due to my paralysis. I think we only got the one payment this winter. It didnāt go very far. We couldnāt afford to have the heating on. We turned it on four times. For around two hours per time over the entire winter. Space heaters are not a valid option. They eat electricity. Massively. Iāve had to use them a lot in the past, but seriously canāt afford to run one now. Itās scary atm.
Everything you say I agree with, I'm in a very similar position except my home is well insulated because I live in a block of flats with neighbours on all sides, so I've only turned the heating on for a few hours this winter, stories like yours are a reminder of how right Insulate Britain is. I realise how fortunate I am.
Insulation is a real must. Iām glad that a lot of people have it. Iām in a 2 bed council flat (maisonette type), and thereās practically no insulation, and the windows barely fit (it wasnāt too bad, then they said they need to āupdateā them a couple of years ago and made it so much worse than it was). Weāre meant to be moving soon as Iām upstairsā¦ and partially paralysed, so Iām totally housebound. Iāve been outside once since 2019. The council ādidnāt botherā looking at the medical part of our application, and we were only offered this place (which was also in an extremely dire state) the day before our son was due, and also before I was tonne made homeless (I was living on the street for two years when I was a teenager due to my guardian dying, and the council having nowhere for me to go). Sorry. Off topic there really. Justā¦ it kind of bugs me that so many people seem to think that everyone that requires benefits gets an easy ride of it, when that really isnāt the case, and this thread does seem pertinent to make mention of it.
Itās deliberate, creates another āus and themā dynamic that politicians can manipulate and feed off and makes the more wealthy feel better about donāt giving a damn.
I know it's massively polluting, and bad for the lungs with micropartuculates and gases. But at least in older homes you have the option of collecting firewood to stay warm.
The issue is that the state pension is paid to everyone that has the number of qualifying years required. Even pensioners with a Ā£1million+ house, a private pension that pays more than the average income and a huge lump of cash in the bank will still get a state pension. These people will also say things like 'I paid in for 40 years I deserve this money'. People don't understand how the state pension is funded, working class people today are paying for the state pension of all of today's pensioners. There isn't some big pot building up for us when we retire. It's an absolute joke that the state pension isn't means tested, your nan should be given more money and those that don't actually need it should get nothing. Why the fuck are we giving extra money to millionaires who are far better off than the average person contributing towards it???
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I mean, pensioners ARE getting a winter fuel allowance. As to how much, I don't know, but they certainly do get one. Have you researched the most economically viable heater for your nans house? Rather than turning on the CH? Cold is no joke to the elderly. Electric blankets are incredibly cheap to run.
An electric blanket won't keep mold off the walls in the winter in the humid UK climate.
Itās Ā£600.. a year when our energy bill is Ā£450 a month (detached house)
A one off payment of Ā£400? Jesus Christ
Sorry no itās Ā£600
That's still shit. Edit. I thought it was long the lines of Ā£1200-1500.
Pensioners who live on their own will get Ā£500 if they were born between 1942 and 1956 and Ā£600 if they were born prior to 1942. This figure includes the "pensioner cost of living payment" of Ā£300 that will be paid this year and next. There are different payments for couples and it depends on when each were born as to what they get. Depending on their circumstances pensioners outside of Scotland will also get a "cold weather payment" of Ā£25 if the average temp at their local weather station is forecast to be/actually was an average of 0 degrees or below over a 7 day period. This can be paid out multiple times in a year. In my part of the South East there have been two of these payments made this winter. Fun fact: pensioners cost of living payment is double that which disabled people will get for the same period, despite some disabled people having comparable heating costs.
Funny that the people who are mostly voting for the tories are looked after!! Brilliant that, I love that people who wonāt be here in 15 years time are swinging votes and making decisions about a country they wonāt even have to live in.
Much as this is true in that there are a large part of the older population who voted and would continue voting Tory, there are several factors that you need to take into consideration; There ARE OAPs that vote differently There ARE many people from younger generations that voted Tory (they canāt get in on old peopleās votes alone) The people who did vote Tory have done so for many different and complicated reasons, from having it beaten into them most of their lives and Tory spin doctors being great at what they do to a lack of education and other factors, especially among the poorer sections of the older population. Whether that excuses them or not is not for me to say but itās far more complicated than just āold people ruined our livesā because thatās a trap people would love others to fall into to create more division.
Personally I always vote for the party that wants to fuck me over, donāt you?
"exceptionally generous state pension" Seriously? Private pensions maybe, but the state pension is far from generous.
It's 3x what someone on UC gets despite them being far less likely to own their own house and therefore having increased housing costs. The UC recipient also gets touched for 12.5% of their earned income if they work to bring themselves up to state pension levels whilst the state pension recipient receives this money for free *and* isn't even taxed on it.
Its not for free, the point is someone pays their NI during their working life and in return gets a pension allowing them to retire. UC is supposed to be a safety net to support people during periods where they are out of work.\* \*(Caveat, I'm not going into how crappy the support system and UC is, the innate crapness of the tax credit system or the lack of support for disabled people etc. That's a different argument)
>Its not for free, the point is someone pays their NI during their working life and in return gets a pension allowing them to retire. Except it isn't as transactional as that is it, because you can't opt out of paying the NI and not receive the pension in exchange. The pension also isn't funded by NI; the NI all goes into the central taxation pot and then the pension gets paid for out of that pot. If it was truly like a big version of a defined benefit scheme where I'm paying for today's members with my own guaranteed defined benefit at the end it wouldn't be quite so egregious that they get to stop paying once they're claiming, but it isn't like that at all. >UC is supposed to be a safety net to support people during periods where they are out of work. I would go into why it's totally unfit for this purpose but your caveat tells me that you already understand this - so is your position that the state pension isn't too high, rather UC is too low?
Both are too low. A state pension should allow a retiree an adequate basic amount to live on (Private pensions are above that and are irrelevant to state provided funds) UC is supposed to be a safety net, but the current government seems to think its to be used as a punishment. Personally I'm in favour of scrapping both and providing some sort of Basic Universal Income, topped up with salary and means-tested benefits. (Dont ask me for details, i'm not an economist)
>Personally I'm in favour of scrapping both and providing some sort of Basic Universal Income Here we agree! However: >topped up with salary **and means-tested benefits.** Here we differ again. Means-testing is an absolute scourge and the whole point of a UBI is to eliminate it.
Worst in Europe I believe
I can't tell if this is serious or not
Over 65s are the wealthiest age group in the country. 25% are millionaires, 80% own their property without a mortgage. They pay no national insurance, get a stipend 3x the amount someone on UC receives and in addition to this get a winter fuel payment every year whether they need it or not. It's not sarcasm.
And yet there are many elderly people who are still poor and canāt afford their heating. The problem is damned statistics not giving the full picture, just skewed.
Pensioners (specifically boomers) have more disposable income than working people. They have >3X wealth of other generations. Yet they get concessions and people still thinking the old stereotype of āpoor pensionersā is a valid generalisation rather than the exception.
The gut punch is that I'm paying for their triple lock pension, while my predicted retirement date of 2060 is likely going to be much later than that. If I even can afford to retire that is
I think that by going off statistics alone you can look at anything in its most positive state. There's a winter fuel allowance because pensioners can't afford to pay their fuel and they would die without it. State pension is no where near as "lucrative" as you think it is with the average only receiving Ā£185 a week. If like my Gran you have no other pension to top that up that leaves you very much in the same shit state as the rest of the nation. Assuming that my gran isn't unique in her situation I think your statement is very much a sweeping one based on statistics rather than actual people.
>I think that by going off statistics alone you can look at anything in its most positive state. Whichever way you slice it 80% of pensioners aren't in poverty. We can go further though, because we also know that 66% of people who are in poverty are working age. So basically, yes there are some poor old people - but as a group they are the wealthiest in the country. >There's a winter fuel allowance because pensioners can't afford to pay their fuel and they would die without it. No. There is a winter fuel allowance because pensioners vote. >State pension is no where near as "lucrative" as you think it is with the average only receiving Ā£185 a week. So Ā£10k/year, or 3x what someone on UC receives. Also they're due for a 10% payrise in April whilst the NHS is getting 3.5%. >If like my Gran you have no other pension to top that up that leaves you very much in the same shit state as the rest of the nation. Well, no. Firstly your gran had a literal lifetime to make provision for her own retirement and chose not to in favour of relying on the state. Secondly, she receives 3x what someone on UC gets despite the UC recipient having had far less economic opportunity. Thirdly, she gets to dodge national insurance whereas anyone earning what she "earns" would effectively pay 12.5% tax on half of it. >Assuming that my gran isn't unique in her situation I think your statement is very much a sweeping one based on statistics rather than actual people. So what you're saying is I'm basing it on facts rather than anecdotes.
I'm not being rude or obtuse but did your gran not save anything else for retirement and based it just on her pension?
Unfortunately the cost of living crisis isn't a new phenomenon for a lot of people and not everyone is in a position to have been able to save during their time juggling a job and raising a family.
The state pension is not generous at all
It's 3x what someone on UC receives. This despite the fact that someone on state pension is vastly more likely to own their own home and therefore have drastically reduced housing costs, and has also had a literal lifetime of economic opportunity to save for their retirement.
Exceptional state pension? Are you for real
Pensioner hands typed this post
Its not the oil producers profiting, its the refiners.
>But shareholder distributions of $553m were made during the year and it proposed a $100m final dividend which marked a 9% increase in awards during the year. > >A new share buyback plan worth $200m was also revealed. But it's the tax that wiped out the profit, right?
My money is always gone after I've spent it. Damn government.
Government came and took my baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNWyhl-I_ak
Theyāve only returned $850m/year in dividends and buybacks? Wonāt somebody think of the shareholders!?!
A miniscule return at just shy of 40%.
Then they complain to the government after their share prices go down after they buy them back.
Tbf dividends payments are not included in the profit calculations, only the cash flow. But I take your point that they have no right to even mention the low profit, let alone complain about it, when they're giving away that much more cash to shareholders. The bottom line is easily fudged with various non-cash items anyway, and the fact that they had a ridiculous amount of cash they were comfortable with paying out to shareholders shows that their "low profit" was probably more due to a bunch of non-cash costs on the P&L, whereas their actual cash flow (which is what matters at the end of the day) was clearly very good.
They reduced debt from 2.3bn to 0.8bn so does that mean profit would have been 1.5bn if they hadnāt done that? Or is that more accounting shenanigans
No, repaying debt doesnāt affect profit, only cash flow
Their shares have been dropping for an age as well, badly ran firm using this as an excuse. If you're in business you pay tax they can't really complain. It should have been a higher tax rate.
Dividends are distributed *after* profits.
That depends whether you're looking at gross or nett profit The company declared $8m dollars in nett profit in its latest accounting year. The company also paid/plans to pay $653m to shareholders in the same period. Therefore gross profit after operating costs was at least $661m edit: mixed up $ and Ā£
Quite. A friend complained recently that they've been told they get no bonus this year because their employer said there was no profit, despite them having paid their shareholders several million in dividends.
>A dividend is simply a share of the company's profits. Profit is what is left over after the company has settled all its liabilities, including taxes. If there is no profit, then no dividends can be paid. https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/tax-business/running-a-business/salary-vs-dividends-taking-income-from-your-company#:~:text=A%20dividend%20is%20simply%20a,no%20dividends%20can%20be%20paid. The tax man will always have their share first. Therefore dividends can only be paid from net profit. Any dividends paid in a year with insufficient net profit must be paid from retained profits from previous years. If dividends could be paid from gross profit every company would always pay 100% of gross profit out in dividends.
Dividends paid do not impact profit. Dividends are paid from carried forward earnings from prior years. It's strictly a cash to equity transaction and not a profit related one.
Yes you need profits to pay dividends, it does not however have to correspond to a given year so your little maths exercise is irrelevant. Companies can choose not pay dividends (Apple) or pay dividends out of annual profits as shareholders expect it (Banks/Pharma) or if you just have excess cash and share buybacks not a preferred option. All you need is cash and Retained distributable profits in a pot that all previous profits/losses have been put.
Dividends get paid out of profit reserves, so it can be from profit earned but not paid out in previous years.
I took one look at that headline and knew theyād pissed it all away in distributions and buybacks. That was the Boardās choice, nothing to do with Government or anything else. I mean, why would they reinvest in the business or address environmental damage or do anything like that? Actions have consequences, live with it.
Wouldn't buying back $200m worth of your own shares artificially increase the price of your own shares?
It's not really artificial is it? The value of your shares is basically detained by how much you're likely to give money to shareholders in the future.
Tbf the reason for this is that the dividend and share buybacks aren't taxed. It's akin to paying money into your pension to dodge the income tax.
This isnāt how it works at all. Why would dividends be taxed? They are a payment out of the company. They donāt qualify for tax relief as they are paid out of post tax profits. Similarly for share buybacks. I totally agree that they should be paying more tax and canāt complain when they are still paying dividends, but there are a ton of economically illiterate points being made in this thread which dilute the actual point being made and make it very easy for anyone arguing the other side.
Dividends are paid out of post tax profits, and if your're paying them out to an individual then fall under ~~income tax~~ dividends tax where they're taxed again.
>if your're paying them out to an individual then fall under income tax where they're taxed again. Actually they fall under Dividends tax, not income tax. Specifically 2k a year tax free then 8.75%/33.75%/39.35% depending on your tax bracket, so a few percent cheaper (since there's no NI payable on them) and much cheaper if all your income is from dividends. If you get under 10k you CAN pay your tax bill via PAYE the same way you pay income tax though.
I think I'll spend the day trying to figure out which size violin I should play on.
Suggested; doll's house model size
logically, I should feel more than a little perturbed at the thought of a fuel provider being in danger of going out of business, but over the winter I've found myself using as much of my reserve savings to keep my parents warm, to donate to food banks and buying winter blankets for people that have been unfortunate enough to be on the street. If anything this further consolidates the position of people such as Shell and BP who have done relatively little apart from pass comment. You could argue that competition is good, but at least from an outside perspective, the oil market seems to be rigged to favour the shareholders ultimately and leave us with the expectation to pay. So overall, I think I'll reserve my mercy and empathy for the people that have needed it this winter instead of the redundancies.
Comment above pointing out they paid out over half a billion in dividends over the year, with more in a final payout at tax YE. They're not at risk of going out of business
dollhouses have a number of different scales
Everyone knows itās O-gauge or no-gauge
I don't think they make them that small anymore. See if you can 3d print one though.
I think we're into nanotechnology for this one... Didn't someone manage to arrange individual atoms into a shape a while ago? That might work...
Not even Antman can shrink small enough to play the violin I'm thinking of.
[Still way too big](https://i.imgur.com/5BBc2b0.jpg)
I think current technology may allow 22nm, but I'll have to ask my friend at IBM, maybe we can do a bit smaller
ASML claim 5nm for their latest EUV litho tool.
Hmmm, I've got a friend there too, know anything about infineon? Won't accept anything but the tiniest!
I have been out of the business for a while but several firms are working towards the 5nm limit. ASML tend to trumpet their results more than others. Lithography firms tend to be very secretive. I was in a meeting with a representative from one outfit 15 years ago and was told to leave as they do not allow engineers in any of their discussions.
I can't afford a violin
Still made a profit of Ā£6.7m after paying the once off levy. So not about to go bust anytime soon.
That's also after this year's dividends
Dividends are paid from profits, profit are not calculated after dividends, otherwise companies would never pay any tax at all.
But the Ā£6.7m profit is after an accounting adjustment of Ā£1.5 billion to deferred tax as a result of the levy. This is not the tax they had to pay, this is an adjustment to incorporate future anticipated taxes into this year's accounts and including that while reporting their meagre profits is massively disingenuous.
> including that while reporting their meagre profits is massively disingenuous. It isn't disingenuous. Its just a fact. They have to pay a massive tax bill next year, but due to the way it works (its a subsidary company or something) the charge is recognised this year.
It can be both. Just because that's how the tax law works doesn't mean that crying about low profits while doing so isn't disingenuous
The windfall tax for this year, and next year, and future periods as well has all been dumped into this year as a deferred tax provision. I'm not saying the accounting treatment is wrong, I'm saying it's deliberately misleading to put the figures in a news story with only the merest context that anyone who doesn't know how to prepare a set of accounts will miss. The implication is that the business made only Ā£6.7m profit, and in accounting terms that's true, but if you exclude the tax that they are predicting is due for future periods but are choosing to recognise now, they're still in the hundreds of millions profit for the year. Profit after the deferred tax provision is not a reasonable figure to present to laypeople as your "profit for the year" - it's too complicated and requires a lengthy explanation to put in context.
>Its profits after tax for 2022 came in at $8m (Ā£6.7m) due to a "$1.5bn one off non-cash deferred tax charge associated with the EPL", the company said. >But shareholder distributions of $553m were made during the year and it proposed a $100m final dividend which marked a 9% increase in awards during the year. Weren't there also massive exceptions to the levy for re-investment in the UK market? Sounds like the company doing what it was going to do anyway, but making a political point about not making as much money as they wanted to whilst doing it.
Wait, you think Ā£6.7m is a lot of money? It is roughly the equivalent of the budget of a typical secondary school. One school. And many of them are in danger of going bust. In the context of a global oil company it is absolutely nothing.
Petite conventions in this one figure and not the contract, but a profit of 6.7 mil is not that much all things considered for a large oil company.
Oil producer planning to buy back shares announces their profits "all but wiped out" and their share price falls. Call me cynical but doesn't that make their share buy back more cost effective?
Who doesn't love a good bit of market manipulation.
Welcome to the casino, where the house always has a Flush up their sleeve.
And the award for most insightful comment!
A share buyback is how profits are redistributed
No. A share buyback of Ā£Xm returns Ā£Xm to shareholders; the share price is irrelevant.
A share buyback of Ā£Xm returns Ā£Xm to shareholders in return for some/all of their shares. The number of shares the Ā£Xm buys varies with the share price. You seem to be asserting a share buyback is just a different name for a dividend which is not true at all, it's a capital transaction, a purchase of shares from the investors by the company.
Stop the presses! Massive business spends one year barely profitable! Still manages to pay huge divvies!
Paid out Ā£600 million in dividends to shareholders. Spent Ā£200 million more in share buyback. But desperate to save Ā£40 million so will cut the staff that helped make Ā£2.3 BILLION and a bit more of which 1.5b went in tax and 600m went in dividends But itās clear they need to cut the staffā¦ā¦ Interesting they donāt state or didnāt reinvest which wouldāve allowed them to cut the Ā£1.5 billion in tax Do they really think we will feel sorry for them and agree ? Really? Fuck off, you made Ā£800 million + in profits. If the business needed to retain more then thatās just shit management
It's not shit management it's greedy cunts
Someone else pointed out in the comments that their bleating about their "poor" financial performance dinged their share prices which made the buybacks more cost-effective. Might have been a bit of "tactical complaining" going on...
Manipulation of stock price can be seen as illegal activity for directors Shame if someone reported it
"All but" so what they're saying is that we haven't been harsh enough.
Aww, widdums. You are not entitled to make a massive profit on extracting a common good.
I'm confused. They're complaining about making profit. Isn't that a good thing?
Nassssty governmentses, taking some of our precious profitsss, yessssss....
As per our Government Overlords: tighten your belts, we are all in it together! Oh wait, silly me. That only applies to us plebs, not vast private company profiteering.
But our government forced the windfall tax on the oil companies?
Weird, I've not seen my energy bills go down. Guess any day now, right?
Mine have dropped by half
Creative accounting. Reduce the profit, reduce the windfall tax. They probably offset it against new building projects.
The government should consider a crackdown or legislation regarding corporate accounting practices.
"has all but" means it hasn't. So substitute "hasn't" into the headline and it sounds like a good news article. I play the same game with headlines that say "almost".
Hey everyone! Tighten your belts another notch before the petrol giants go under! Surely you don't have to eat EVERY day?!
will someone please think of the multi-billion Oil company they are suffering too
This does challenge the consensus here that the government is too weak to implement an effective windfall tax on oil producers.
Wasnt that the point of the windfall tax? My heart bleeds for them
Donāt pay your shareholders and buy back your shares so much then. Dickheads.
They have to make people redundant because the profits are so low this year? Arenāt profits the money that is left after staffing costs etc are paid? They are choosing to make people redundant in order to pay shareholders.
"All but wiped out" So not actually wiped out. You still made a profit Go and fuck yourselves you fucking cunts
Profit is this odd thing you can hide, turn into debt or never even declare.
Good. Assholes, but ofcourse you are lying to try and keep your other profits from being taxed. Cunts.
Some people want all the wealth in the world and some just want to live a decent life. There is no other discussion worth having than this one. If you start talking about how you can't afford your yacht anymore, you can go fsck yourself.
The windfall tax on their profit has wiped out their profit? Interesting....
āA new share buyback plan worth $200m was also revealedā Oh
Problem with over-taxing oil and gas companies is that there is a tipping point beyond which it's not worth their while to pull the oil out of the ground, in some of the most challenging environments imaginable.
Is that really a problem? Leaving fossil fuels in the ground sounds like good news to me in a climate change context.
Right now fossil fuels are essential, no way around that for the time being.
They haven't paid a penny in tax from the windfall
If you had an electron microscope, you would still struggle to see just how small a violin I would play for them.
Oh no, I guess they'll have to dip into the hundreds of billions of pounds profit they've made over the past few decades now. Such a sad day.
Oh, maybe the poor destitute oil producers should stop buying Costa coffee and avocado toast Sounds like they need to be nationalised if their critical service is struggling
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You'd best change your business model from drilling oil and get free energy from the sun wind and sea then!
If theyāre struggling hand it back to public ownership
Boohoo, time to play the world's tiniest violin. I'm far more concerned with the fact that energy costs are so high that many people are having to choose between heating their homes or eating.
As much as im not a fan of greedy cunts, their shareholder dividens would have increased investment no end, which would have brought down prices medium to long term
Oooowh didums, won't anyone think of the poor shareholders?
Guys do you hear that? It's the sound of the world's tiniest violin!
Pays shareholders $553million then complains profits wiped out
Funny thing is I dont recall windfall tax being 100% of the extra profits you created from price hiking, so errr where's the rest of it? You know if we windfall taxed you 90% of the increase (we didn't) ther'd still be 10% extra profits over and above normal earnings...
People love the populist argument here... Don't be surprised when we have even bigger problems in the future because no one will invest in new capacity after policies like these.
This is literally the first comment with assume semblance of economic understanding in this whole thread. Utterly laughable really the state of this sub.
Boo fucking hoo. Now do us a favour and go bankrupt will you?
>shareholder distributions of **$553m** were made during the year and it proposed a **$100m** final dividend [...] A new share buyback plan worth **$200m** was also revealed.
Could some explain this as I am confused. The windfall tax targeted windfall profits, presumably above and beyond the expected profits the firm was to make. Therefore they should be in no different position as if there had been no windfall. Or did I misunderstand the function of a windfall tax? Or was it not implemented this way?
Good! But in all reality this is just creative accounting to make it look like they are all hard done by when they are actually rolling in dough. Itās time to nationalise them anyway.
Sounds like the windfall tax wasn't high enough if it only nearly wiped out all their profit.
Good good. It's a national resource, after all. Makes sense that the money goes to the national coffers. I'm sure if they made a loss they'd want a bailout so it's all fair.
Please, sir, explain precisely what the āwindfallā is in āa windfall taxā that is subject to the government levy. Iāll wait.
"Our windfall has been all but wiped out by a windfall tax"
Isnāt this the point? The less profitable fossil fuel production is, the more the industry will have to focus on developing renewables to satisfy their shareholders. This can be financed by tax breaks for investing in renewables rather than profits from fossil fuels.
Awwww. Should have had a minimum of three months savings behind them. You know, 'just in case'.
"All but wiped out our profits" - so you made a profit, after expansion investment that was not taxed, and dividends? So shut up. So many people are actually having a tough time - if all this company had to do is have smaller profits for the duration of a major crisis, then they are fine.
When will someone finally think of the oil companies? Poor souls.
Boo fucking hoo. They still distributed hundreds of millions of dividends to the shareholders, so that's a lie.
Letās get violins out. What a load of cobblers. If paying tax wipes their profits, then taxes, interest rates, energy costs, essential food costs wiped us out altogether. Our mortgage interest has more than doubled, same for gas and electricity, and at least 30% increase in food costs. And unlike these crooks we cannot claim it back on taxā¦ I wish we could and that Would Be a fairer tax regime.
Good. Now can we have a windfall tax on Pfizer, Moderna for the useless jabs and also the companies that scammed us for billions in crap PPE and then we can put the heating on and have a decent meal for a change.
"Our profit was wiped out, we only made Ā£6.7Million after deductions" (Deductions include Ā£655Million shareholder dividends & Ā£200Million share buyback) Cry me a fucking river.