Schmidt's balls must clang as he walks

In noted contrast to Starbucks, Google's chairman Eric Schmidt is up-front about the company's approach to tax:

"We pay lots of taxes; we pay them in the legally prescribed ways," he told Bloomberg. "I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate."
"It's called capitalism," he said. "We are proudly capitalistic. I'm not confused about this."

You may or may not agree with Schmidt's approach to international taxation, but you can't deny that the man has style.

Of course, this didn't go down too well in the usual quarters:

In Britain Vince Cable was unimpressed by Mr Schmidt's views. The Business Secretary told The Daily Telegraph: "It may well be [capitalism] but it's certainly not the job of governments to accommodate it."

Well, Vince, since the practice is apparently legal, it appears that governments have been accommodating it. So are you not doing your job? or would "doing your job" result in companies leaving the UK en masse and depriving the UK of jobs, VAT, NI and income taxes? Let's see.