Do Starbucks' tax planning and practices set a bad precedent? The following is a review of the Reuters report on “How Starbucks avoids taxes in the UK”: Reuters (2013). It examines what tax evasion and evasion are, as well as issues affecting the ethics of Starbucks' tax planning and practices. Finally, comment on whether tax planning for Starbucks is recommended for any other multinational company.2. Tax evasion or tax evasion2.1. A Review of Tax PlanningTax evasion, subject to what is said below, can be broadly described as the legitimate management of one's affairs in such a way as to minimize tax liability. The distinction between this and fraud must be clearly understood from the outset. Fraud is, for example, deliberately submitting false declarations, omitting sales from the trading account, inflating expense deduction claims, etc. All of these may give rise to sanctions during the assessment and constitute prosecutable offenses. . The putting in order of one's affairs, mentioned above, is authorized unless it falls within the terms of the specific anti-avoidance articles. In my opinion, in the Starbucks scenario, transfer pricing and tax avoidance loom large as opposed to tax avoidance. Indeed, Starbucks may have undertaken an intentional plan to shift profits from the UK to offshore countries, in the case of the Netherlands, which has a lower tax regime than the UK.2.2. Intentional or not? In other cases, it may be an intentional plan to either minimize taxes or shift profits of multinational corporations overseas. The techniques used to minimize payments are mainly: Tax planning Tax avoidance Tax evasionAs with all tax planning...... middle of paper ...... and ethics in business. I realized that it was morally wrong and unfair that these big companies were driven by profit over social responsibility and I cited my country, Zimbabwe, as an example of how these companies exploit lesser countries. developed by transferring their profits. After analyzing all the information and logs, my opinion is that Starbucks practices tax planning as a management tool. It is important to reduce costs, and taxes are one of the biggest costs. Often, multinationals see themselves as one group and these companies operate in different countries, but their ultimate goal is profit. My final diagnosis would be this: whether uncontrolled and uncontrolled tax planning will have a detrimental effect on many economies globally, hence the rise of economic groupings such as the OECD which monitor the ethics and conduct of these companies..