Well thanks Graham, you seem to have understood what I was getting at. It is not so much the tax avoidance through transfer pricing etc. that annoyed me, as taking us for mugs by claiming to be so committed to the UK etc.
As you say the ultimate objective is to achieve monopoly by taking out the local competition, but in the meantime we, as consumers, still have choice. While this remains the case Starbucks have to think about their reputation.
A recent report suggested that the Starbucks brand had suffered in a way that Amazon, for example, has not. To me this is because Amazon has a far better monopoly of their market sector.
Anyway thanks for commenting chaps.
PS - sadly I am not in a position to engineer my own finances and have to leave it to HMRC, and yes, they manage to do so in such a way as to maximise the tax paid.
