Real Quick Buzzdive

Holy shit! I've got work today. But far be a thing like rersponsibility to keep me from bringing you, the non-existent reader, that hard-hitting, cutting-edge analysis that you've come to know and crave.

Today's buzzdive takes us from LA to London.

A third of UK’s biggest businesses pay no tax

Almost a third of the UK’s 700 biggest businesses paid no corporation tax in the 2005-06 financial year while another 30 per cent paid less than £10m each, an official study has found.

Of the tax paid by these businesses, two-thirds came from just three industries – banking, insurance and oil and gas – while the alcohol, tobacco, car and real estate sectors contributed only a few hundred million pounds.

Altogether, these large public and private companies paid £24.4bn in 2005-06, or just more than half of all the corporation tax paid, according to a National Audit Office analysis of the tax raised from the 700 companies handled by the large business service of Revenue & Customs.

It found that 50 businesses, or 7 per cent of the 700, paid 67 per cent of the tax while about 220 paid none and another 210 each paid less than £10m.

Some tax experts were taken aback by the small amount of tax many of the companies paid. Michael Devereux of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, said: ”It is certainly surprising."

Excuse me, "surprising"? It's surprising that people with lots of money hire lawyers and tax gurus to milk the system for every loophole it can find or construe to the satisfaction of tha authorities? Sounds like Oxford has an interesting cirriculum for buisiness.

RHE man gets jail time for property fixes

He built a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few concrete columns to decorate his driveway, and now Francisco Linares is going to jail for it.

Linares had been given six months to get final permits for the offending structures or remove them as part of a plea agreement reached in January, when he pleaded no contest to five misdemeanor counts of violating the Rolling Hills Estates building code.

Oh I'll sleep easier knowing this hardened criminal learned his lesson. Always remember, the "real" in real estate is Spanish for "royal". Just in case you thought your home was your castle.