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> I hate how google, facebook etc. makes hundreds of millions in my country, but barely pay taxes. Figuring out how much a large company makes is complex, whic
by Lazare 10y ago
> I hate how google, facebook etc. makes hundreds of millions in my country, but barely pay taxes.
Figuring out how much a large company makes is complex, which is why we have a very complex system of rules and laws to let us calculate it. And according to those laws, Google, Facebook, etc. don't actually make hundreds of millions in profit in your country.
That's why they don't pay taxes, and it's what the linked article is about: Because your country (and mine) has passed laws which say that they aren't making money despite what your intuition tells you.
If you want to fix it, the starting point would be those laws. Except...we've been trying to improve those laws for a long, long time. Many are now many decades old. Transfer pricing rules exist for a reason; simply abolishing them would cause other problems and greater imbalances.
At some point maybe we need to step back and focus on taxing the consumption of real people (which is, in comparison, much easier). Facebook may be inherently hard to tax; but those profits flow into the pockets of real people, and they are (in comparison!) easy to tax.
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- sbov 10y agoReal people disproportionately situated in the US. I'm not sure if that helps any of those other countries. The basic problem is companies using public resources of a country but not paying back into the system.
- Lazare 10y agoIf you're taking about resources which have usage which is measurable and excludable (postal service, road network, legal system) then charge for use. Amazon relies heavily on the road network to deliver goods; it's trivial (and a good idea in any case) to charge commercial vehicles a fee to cover their wear and tear on the roads, carbon emissions, etc. Similarly, if they're filing legal cases, charge them a fee, etc. If you're talking not so much about them using actual resources, but benefiting in some vague sense from a country having a functioning police system, even if they don't actually use it, then no, you can't charge them fees. But if they're making sales in your country, you can charge GST/VAT. But if they're not using actual resources, not making sales in your country, and not making profits... ...then they're not going to be paying back into the system. Even if you really need them too, even if it would be highly immoral for them not to. The existence of a problem doesn't imply the existence of a solution.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]