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  • Hacker News
  • Tax system and government budget in general are very deliberate system of smoke and mirrors designed to obfuscate how the money is spent. You are paying income tax, but your employee is paying payroll tax for you, is buying health insurance to avoid tax that would have to pay if that money was given to you. You are paying part of corporate tax indirectly, paying various tariffs sales taxes etc.

    There should be only property tax and income tax, and the person paying the tax should be able to choose how to spend that money. Maybe you don't care and will let your congressmen to handle it, but maybe you would change your money to go to NASA or and then the government won't be able to spend so much on a pointless war or on building a stadium.

    by chr1
  • Unfortunately if your employer pays for private health insurance, HMRC says that is a taxable benefit and you still pay tax. The more insidious part is how the government makes employers pay a hidden 15% national insurance tax that needs to be paid on top of the tax on your salary.
    by Okx
  • this is probably an unpopular opinion, but isn't this working as intended:

      * Palantir started in the US as a start up and burned a lot of money building the systems they are running today and that are finally profitable
  * Those systems are used from the UK subsidiary but if a different consultancy would use them, they would be billed accordingly. That's transfer pricing
    The article says as much. Before Palantir has to pay taxes in the US, they first work through previous losses which to a large extent are stock options for their employees. Early employees took a risk working there, it paid off, that gets deducted from the profits. Same for other early spending.
    by dosinga
  • > this is probably an unpopular opinion, but isn't this working as intended:

    Not sure how trustworthy it is, but assuming what https://palantir-uk-tax-evasion.pagey.site/ writes is true, then:

    > a profit-allocation structure that lets most UK revenue/profit be recorded with the US parent instead of the UK subsidiary [...] Both only work because of a third factor: the US isn't taxing it either, so shifting profit "back" to the US isn't costly.

    Seems a bit weird, they're not getting properly taxed anywhere in the world apparently. If they were properly taxed in the UK OR the US, things would have been different. But as noted, nothing here is illegal seemingly, just not good for anyone except Palantir.

    by embedding-shape
  • It's working as designed, not working as intended.
    by tremon
  • There's some of that, but a large part of the "Palantir magic" is the on-premises services - integration, customisation, training & support. There's almost 1000 UK employees that got paid 40% of revenue.
    by helsinkiandrew
  • If they want the tax benefits of a different consultancy using their systems then they can sell their systems to other consultancies. Obviously there is an advantage to operating in the U.K. otherwise they wouldn’t do it so obviously they should pay taxes on their income earned in the U.K from their U.K. operations.
    by reticulates
  • Seems like Palantir and the UK are a great match for each other.
    by Cider9986
  • I seriously do not understand why companies pay taxes on the income and not the revenue. (EDIT: I mixed them up)

    I pay on the revenue. I also buy things. I also consume. And somehow I can manage with taxes on the revenue.

    This would also solve the problem of companies that get 10 M€ in revenue, but somehow only 10€ is taxed because expenditure, capex etc

    by BrandoElFollito
  • Some companies run at an extremely narrow margin. For example the margin for grocery stores is reportedly 1%. If you changed the tax system to tax gross revenues, now those stores would need to dramatically raise prices to accommodate.

    It's not an easy problem.

    by drdec
  • Taxing companies on revenue would completely wipe out low-margin businesses like supermarkets, and create massive distortions in the economy where one company being vertically integrated and owning everything being practically the only option, as otherwise goods passed between businesses means tax is paid on the revenue twice.

    It would kill the economy overnight.

    by Okx
  • Revenue based taxes are a an idea to consider as they have many advantages - a big one is that they are harder to evade. One disadvantage of them is that they give advantage to big players that own the whole supply chain. Imagine you are a small player and need a supplier who needs a supplier who needs a supplier. Suddenly the tax is paid 4 times while your competitor who owns the whole supply chain pays once.

    Imo when you start thinking about it the most reasonable position is that corporate income tax should be 0. Instead we should focus on consumption taxes, land taxes and taxing other resources and especially pollution.

    by bluecalm
  • I got curious while reading and I've read this[1]:

    > Revenue is total money from core business activities before expenses are deducted.

    > Income, or net income, is earnings remaining after all expenses are deducted from revenue.

    Sorry for being pedantic. I don't understand why English has such ambiguous terms for something that shouldn't be. Or am I even more confused now?

    To directly answer your comment: I agree that companies should be taxed on revenue and not income. Citizens are taxed on revenue, so why aren't companies?! They're supposed to be treated as people.

    [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/122214/what-differe...

    by Pooge
  • How to opt-out of sharing your NHS health records with Palantir:

    https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/about-the-nhs/opt-out-of-sh...

    by tjpnz
  • In case anyone is interested in knowing the "how" part, read this: https://palantir-uk-tax-evasion.pagey.site/
    by freakynit
  • Hard to look past the claude slop design
    by iamacyborg
  • It's mentioned in the article:

    > contracts with customers were signed with Palantir’s US companies, which in turn paid a service fee to local country subsidiaries to deliver the work.

    Similar trick are used by many companies, for example Starbucks UK conveniently paid £40m in "royalty and license fees" to the parent company resulting in a £35m loss in the UK.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/15/starbuckss-...

    by helsinkiandrew
  • The existence of Palantir is a significant public policy failure. It is a tool for corrupt actors - both private and public - to maximize how much they steal from all of us. Their use of existing tax policy is just an example.

    Palantir should be shut down tomorrow; the data it’s collected deleted, its IP destroyed and its executives jailed.

    by rimbo789