5 ms·

> What right does the EU have to tax revenue (not even earnings) from money made on non-EU citizens? Every right. Their government, their citizens, their laws.

> What right does the EU have to tax revenue (not even earnings) from money made on non-EU citizens? Every right. Their government, their citizens, their laws. > but global revenues? These companies exist globally. They would be vastly smaller and have far less impact if they did not have EU citizens. Network effects matter and ignoring them is choosing to not understand the big picture. > So they'd be asking Twitter for money they don't even have. It doesn't strike me they would try to collect this retroactively! Also, I would argue that clearly Twitter should not exist at all if it cannot pay a reasonable tax in the areas where it operates. Edit: What right does Twitter have coming into the EU, collecting data on its citizens, earning revenues from that, and not paying tax? Seems insane to me. Edit 2: I guess all the downvotes trigger a switch, I'm not allowed to post any more on HN I guess. Bye all. Edit 3: To the replies below, I'm not "boxed in" by some silly argument. I'm just banned from replying.

cromwellian 9y ago
> Every right. Their government, their citizens, their laws. If a company doesn't have offices in your country, it's not yours. >These companies exist globally Well, maybe the net result is to get out of the EU then, if the costs of 3% of global revenues exceed profits. If you don't think a company that is mostly non-profit (Twitter) shouldn't exist, I feel that's a pretty pathetic position. So you're either a very greedy, high margin profit company,or the EU says you shouldn't exist?
- crispyporkbites 9y ago
  Twitter is not a non profit by any stretch of the imagination. If a company sells a product (ad space in this instance) in a geography they are doing business there and should pay taxes there.
  - rmah 9y ago
    They do already. The EU proposal is that Twitter also pays taxes on that ad revenue, on a pro-rated basis, where the users reside. This is very different.
- MrLeap 9y ago
  I like your fire. I think we would have fun debating things for days. You've boxed the parent into three positions. They're kind of orthogonal so it's hard to approach directly, but consider a hypothetical 4th position. What if the parent hypothetically thinks that twitter is acceptable collateral damage if it means fixing some other abuse, does that make him greedy? What if he gains nothing from it? I think I've just provided a way out of your boxes, if you disagree please let me know!
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Do we make the word a better place of we cause the destruction of many life-style businesses that provide jobs, a public service, and aren't rapacious and create an environment where only the most aggressive and profitable companies can survive at all, but you get to exact a 3% tax on them? Let me provide an alternative hypothetical scenario: Major tech companies withdraw their businesses out of EU jurisdictions. They run sales and support remotely. They close down local offices. They host in clouds that sit on the border of EU territories, enough to provide low latency, but outside taxing authority. Now what? US Internet services still makes money, EU citizens still have access, but there's no corporate footprint. Do you really think with such huge traffic, if Google and Facebook and Twitter shutdown local offices and entities that businesses still won't advertise with them? Advertisers go where the audience is. The EU would then face a moment of truth about whether to bifurcate the internet like China did, erecting a Great Firewall of Europe, blocking access to properties that are not in compliance. Lest people think this is about my employer, read https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/privacy-compcon97-www/privacy-html.html https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/privacy-compcon... and search from "Cromwell", and you'll see reference to work I published in 1996. I heavy subscribe to John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of Independence" of Cyberspace. To me, the internet was the first new zone of human freedom in millenia that was completely free of state interference, and the "permissionless innovation" it enabled, where anyone could publish anything that was accessible to the whole world, shook me to my core as a young teen in the late 80s when I first go on the net. I think many people who came to the internet decades later perhaps don't have that sense of awe I do, that sense of its specialness. And this continual chipping away at that original Utopian dream with nationalistic, provincial concerns, is to me the unacceptable collateral damage. The collateral damage I'm willing to except is some people getting away with tax evasion, if it means more freedom is preserved and we don't end up with a splintered-net-of-a-thousand rules, where I need to be concerned about what the CCCP and Brussels and Congress thinks before I publish something.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > If a company doesn't have offices in your country, it's not yours. Google has offices in almost every EU country. https://careers.google.com/locations/ https://careers.google.com/locations/ Aarhus, Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bratislava, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dublin (EU HQ), Eemshaven, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hamina, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Lubeck, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, Oslo, Paris. Prague, Rome, Saint-Ghislain, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zagreb Zurich Twitter: https://careers.twitter.com/en/locations.html https://careers.twitter.com/en/locations.html Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Paris
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Those are mostly sales offices, not corporate HQ. Do sales offices need to physically exist locally for internet service sales? Something to ponder.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Maybe Google will leave if they're taxed? Not the worst thing that could happen. The best thing the Romans ever did for the Britains was leave.
      - cromwellian 9y ago
        They left China. Did you also support Brexit?
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        I support whatever the UK voters support. That's how democracy works. As a US citizen, my opinion on Brexit has no bearing, although it’s not hard to understand who voted for it and why they did.
        cromwellian 9y ago
        That's a copout when I asked your opinion. You claimed to be a nationalist, I assume you voted for Trump as well. I'm trying to gauge how much I should continue debating or whether it's dogmatic. I could be convinced the EU has a right to do this, in the context of other things, but to me it seems the wrong way to go about closing corporate loopholes and it hurts businesses that aren't Google and Facebook more than it hurts the big tech companies. This "punishment" ultimately will harm more than it helps, that's my contention. I see no compelling argument otherwise.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  > If you don't think a company that is mostly non-profit (Twitter) shouldn't exist It's not uncommon for monopolies to lose money on some projects as a tradeoff for destroying would-competitors. Thus the fact that a big company is not making a direct immediate profit is NOT a reliable indicator of them being benign. I'm assuming you mean "not profitable" rather than a "non-profit", since the latter indicates an organization explicitly limited to at least ostensibly-charitable purposes.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  This is not a tax on global revenues. It is a tax on EU revenues. This article does not make that clear but other articles about the subject[1][2] include that important detail. [1] http://www.dw.com/en/eu-prepares-revenue-based-tax-on-us-tech-giants/a-43009838 http://www.dw.com/en/eu-prepares-revenue-based-tax-on-us-tec... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/eu-digital-tax-is-back-and-as-wrong-as-ever https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/eu-digita...
  - rmah 9y ago
    It really is a tax on global revenues. It's a tax on global revenues that is enabled by the fact that EU residents get services for free, which enable the global revenues. But the companies are also paying a VAT/GST/sales tax on some of those revenues in nations that charge them. Let's use lumber as an analogy. Let's say the trees are in nation A. And a company from nation B is cutting them them down to make lumber (and is paying appropriate taxes in A for licenses, employees, land, etc). Lumber which is sold to companies in nations C, D and E. And appropriate taxes are paid on those sales. The company also pays income tax in nation B. The EU tax is like nation A saying, "you're using our trees to make even more money in nations C, D and E -- pay us a share of those sales!" In this analogy, the users are the trees. To use another analogy, it's like demanding farmers pay taxes on the revenues that McDonalds makes. It's just silly.
    - Yptur 9y ago
      I don't really see where the problem with that is. If it bothers company B so much they can just look for a different market right?
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Not to those who have show dead activated.

cromwellian 9y ago

> Every right. Their government, their citizens, their laws. If a company doesn't have offices in your country, it's not yours. >These companies exist globally Well, maybe the net result is to get out of the EU then, if the costs of 3% of global revenues exceed profits. If you don't think a company that is mostly non-profit (Twitter) shouldn't exist, I feel that's a pretty pathetic position. So you're either a very greedy, high margin profit company,or the EU says you shouldn't exist?

crispyporkbites 9y ago
Twitter is not a non profit by any stretch of the imagination. If a company sells a product (ad space in this instance) in a geography they are doing business there and should pay taxes there.
- rmah 9y ago
  They do already. The EU proposal is that Twitter also pays taxes on that ad revenue, on a pro-rated basis, where the users reside. This is very different.
MrLeap 9y ago
I like your fire. I think we would have fun debating things for days. You've boxed the parent into three positions. They're kind of orthogonal so it's hard to approach directly, but consider a hypothetical 4th position. What if the parent hypothetically thinks that twitter is acceptable collateral damage if it means fixing some other abuse, does that make him greedy? What if he gains nothing from it? I think I've just provided a way out of your boxes, if you disagree please let me know!
- cromwellian 9y ago
  Do we make the word a better place of we cause the destruction of many life-style businesses that provide jobs, a public service, and aren't rapacious and create an environment where only the most aggressive and profitable companies can survive at all, but you get to exact a 3% tax on them? Let me provide an alternative hypothetical scenario: Major tech companies withdraw their businesses out of EU jurisdictions. They run sales and support remotely. They close down local offices. They host in clouds that sit on the border of EU territories, enough to provide low latency, but outside taxing authority. Now what? US Internet services still makes money, EU citizens still have access, but there's no corporate footprint. Do you really think with such huge traffic, if Google and Facebook and Twitter shutdown local offices and entities that businesses still won't advertise with them? Advertisers go where the audience is. The EU would then face a moment of truth about whether to bifurcate the internet like China did, erecting a Great Firewall of Europe, blocking access to properties that are not in compliance. Lest people think this is about my employer, read https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/privacy-compcon97-www/privacy-html.html https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/privacy-compcon... and search from "Cromwell", and you'll see reference to work I published in 1996. I heavy subscribe to John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of Independence" of Cyberspace. To me, the internet was the first new zone of human freedom in millenia that was completely free of state interference, and the "permissionless innovation" it enabled, where anyone could publish anything that was accessible to the whole world, shook me to my core as a young teen in the late 80s when I first go on the net. I think many people who came to the internet decades later perhaps don't have that sense of awe I do, that sense of its specialness. And this continual chipping away at that original Utopian dream with nationalistic, provincial concerns, is to me the unacceptable collateral damage. The collateral damage I'm willing to except is some people getting away with tax evasion, if it means more freedom is preserved and we don't end up with a splintered-net-of-a-thousand rules, where I need to be concerned about what the CCCP and Brussels and Congress thinks before I publish something.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
> If a company doesn't have offices in your country, it's not yours. Google has offices in almost every EU country. https://careers.google.com/locations/ https://careers.google.com/locations/ Aarhus, Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bratislava, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dublin (EU HQ), Eemshaven, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hamina, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Lubeck, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, Oslo, Paris. Prague, Rome, Saint-Ghislain, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zagreb Zurich Twitter: https://careers.twitter.com/en/locations.html https://careers.twitter.com/en/locations.html Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Paris
- cromwellian 9y ago
  Those are mostly sales offices, not corporate HQ. Do sales offices need to physically exist locally for internet service sales? Something to ponder.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Maybe Google will leave if they're taxed? Not the worst thing that could happen. The best thing the Romans ever did for the Britains was leave.
    - cromwellian 9y ago
      They left China. Did you also support Brexit?
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        I support whatever the UK voters support. That's how democracy works. As a US citizen, my opinion on Brexit has no bearing, although it’s not hard to understand who voted for it and why they did.
        cromwellian 9y ago
        That's a copout when I asked your opinion. You claimed to be a nationalist, I assume you voted for Trump as well. I'm trying to gauge how much I should continue debating or whether it's dogmatic. I could be convinced the EU has a right to do this, in the context of other things, but to me it seems the wrong way to go about closing corporate loopholes and it hurts businesses that aren't Google and Facebook more than it hurts the big tech companies. This "punishment" ultimately will harm more than it helps, that's my contention. I see no compelling argument otherwise.
Terr_ 9y ago
> If you don't think a company that is mostly non-profit (Twitter) shouldn't exist It's not uncommon for monopolies to lose money on some projects as a tradeoff for destroying would-competitors. Thus the fact that a big company is not making a direct immediate profit is NOT a reliable indicator of them being benign. I'm assuming you mean "not profitable" rather than a "non-profit", since the latter indicates an organization explicitly limited to at least ostensibly-charitable purposes.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
This is not a tax on global revenues. It is a tax on EU revenues. This article does not make that clear but other articles about the subject[1][2] include that important detail. [1] http://www.dw.com/en/eu-prepares-revenue-based-tax-on-us-tech-giants/a-43009838 http://www.dw.com/en/eu-prepares-revenue-based-tax-on-us-tec... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/eu-digital-tax-is-back-and-as-wrong-as-ever https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/eu-digita...
- rmah 9y ago
  It really is a tax on global revenues. It's a tax on global revenues that is enabled by the fact that EU residents get services for free, which enable the global revenues. But the companies are also paying a VAT/GST/sales tax on some of those revenues in nations that charge them. Let's use lumber as an analogy. Let's say the trees are in nation A. And a company from nation B is cutting them them down to make lumber (and is paying appropriate taxes in A for licenses, employees, land, etc). Lumber which is sold to companies in nations C, D and E. And appropriate taxes are paid on those sales. The company also pays income tax in nation B. The EU tax is like nation A saying, "you're using our trees to make even more money in nations C, D and E -- pay us a share of those sales!" In this analogy, the users are the trees. To use another analogy, it's like demanding farmers pay taxes on the revenues that McDonalds makes. It's just silly.
  - Yptur 9y ago
    I don't really see where the problem with that is. If it bothers company B so much they can just look for a different market right?

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

Not to those who have show dead activated.