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You comment doesn't make sense to me. Face it: some form of taxation was going to appear no matter what. It's inevitable. You don't just roll into a country, m

• humanrebar 9y ago
  The companies and their employees pay taxes, though. On electricity, on data, on personal income, on gasoline, on property, etc. Whether an entity is paying its fair share is a legitimate question, but it's strange to me to blame companies for following the law as written.
  • zdkl 9y ago
    It's not blame, it's complete lack of sympathy for tech corps' complaints about the tax.
    • discoursism 9y ago
      Which tech corporations have complained about this tax?
• Eridrus 9y ago
  > Face it: some form of taxation was going to appear no matter what. It's inevitable. You don't just roll into a country, make billions of dollars, and expect to pay no tax in perpetuity. This is basically how exports work, why should tech be different?
  • prepend 9y ago
    Actually, this is what “free trade” is exactly. No import tariffs between most EU/US trade. Similarly to what OP said, since this tax disproportionately affects US companies doing business in EU, the US is likely to add a torrid to EU exports to the US. And the argument “You don’t just roll into a country, export billions of dollars of cars (or whatever), and expect...”
    • electricEmu 9y ago
      The accounting is setup to selectively avoid paying taxes in certain countries. That's free trade. It's also shady and selective to avoid paying taxes for infrastructure the company uses. That's kind of screwed up.
      • Eridrus 9y ago
        Despite the fact that these companies are putting headquarters in Ireland, it's actually US taxes that they're seeking to minimize, so it's not really the EU's place to collect them here. With the new UA corporate tax law changes for international income I expect fewer US companies to build HQ in Ireland. Though being domiciled in Ireland also makes the Ireland Data protection Authority their primary point of contact too.
        • electricEmu 9y ago
          The intent of a company to minimize taxes has no bearing. The tax shields hurt both the United States and other EU members. The EU isn't collecting American taxes. They're fixing EU issues.
          • Eridrus 9y ago
            If we accept the Ireland situation as a legal fiction, then the EU would see no revenue here anyway, so I don't see the EU as actually being cheated out of anything. EU firms domiciling in Ireland could reasonably be interpreted as hurting other EU members, but that's not really the case here. This largely looks like an EU tariff on whatever they end up defining digital companies as, which will likely be defined in such a way to tax Google and Facebook, while avoiding taxing Spotify.
• adventured 9y ago
  > You don't just roll into a country, make billions of dollars, and expect to pay no tax in perpetuity. The reason this policy is being pushed, is because some nations have benefitted a lot from US tech companies, eg Ireland, while others eg France and Germany, are jealous that they're not getting their spoils (while simultaneously seeing no large domestic tech company creation). France and Germany have vast influence over the EU, they regard it as their little fiefdom of power. To watch Ireland become richer and richer and richer by the year, as their GDP per capita just keeps soaring ever higher, drives those sleepy giants crazy. GDP per capita Ireland: $68,000 Germany: $44,000 France: $39,000 It's pretty obvious what's going on. Ireland's economy has tripled in size in 17 years. France's economy hasn't net expanded since 2006. Germany's economy hasn't net expanded since 2007. I seriously doubt France and Germany - both high corporate income tax nations - want to see a bunch of Irelands further sprout up in the EU, pulling even more economic benefit away from the power duo in the EU.
  • felipeko 9y ago
    Why don't Germany and France offer the same as Ireland?
    • anonymouz 9y ago
      1) It's a race to the bottom. If Germany or France lower their taxes, Ireland will go even lower. 2) It works for Ireland to have low taxes, because they are a small country collecting the tax for the entire profits in the EU. Even if their tax rate is low, they still get a sizable benefit. This can't work for the big countries.
      • felipeko 9y ago
        1) Why would Germany and France care? They have not been collecting taxes anyway, race to the bottom until Ireland can't anymore. 2) It works for Ireland because other countries prefer not to engage. If Germany had the same tax rate it wouldn't work for Ireland anymore right? As what is now Ireland only revenue would be split between the two or more countries. When this happen wouldn't Ireland have to raise taxes if it wanted to keep the same money? It appears to me that this would achieve an stable and healthier equilibrium after some time.
• MarkMc 9y ago
  There is already some form of taxation - VAT in the UK is 20%. Why does the UK deserve more than 20%, given that the vast majority of Google and Facebook's engineers and managers are in the US?
  • mattmanser 9y ago
    You don't understand how VAT works. If I spend £100 on AdWords as a company, the £20 VAT comes off my VAT bill. I pay £20 less. So Google's VAT bill is utterly inconsequential and meaningless. VAT is only paid once by consumers for products, advertising is a company expense that simply shifts the VAT one level down the chain. It doesn't get applied at every level on the supply chain, it gets passed down. So if Amy's Amazing Tours sells a £100000 tour round London, without any advertising, it generates £20000 VAT paid by Amy. If the same tour is sold by Mike, for the same price of a 100k, but with £50000 worth of Google adverts, Mike pays only £10000 VAT with Google paying £10000 too. Still adds up to £20000. Fact is, Google are using the UK's infrastructure, our commons, our laws, our police force, our army, our NHS, our roads, our telecommunications, etc. to do business. And need to contribute to it. Plus we tax economic activity to support our welfare systems for our society and Google/Facebook/etc. are circumventing that.
    • MarkMc 9y ago
      > VAT is only paid once by consumers for products, advertising is a company expense that simply shifts the VAT one level down the chain. It doesn't get applied at every level on the supply chain, it gets passed down. That's one way to look at it. Another way is to see it as a tax paid by each supplier based on how much value that supplier has added to the supply chain - a sort of 'value added' tax, if you will. > So if Amy's Amazing Tours sells a £100000 tour round London, without any advertising, it generates £20000 VAT paid by Amy. > If the same tour is sold by Mike, for the same price of a 100k, but with £50000 worth of Google adverts, Mike pays only £10000 VAT with Google paying £10000 too. Still adds up to £20000. In this example Amy contributes £100k in value, Mike contributes £50k in value and Google contributes £50k in value. Essentially Google has allowed the UK government to collect the same amount of tax even though Mike has produced only half as much value as Amy. Isn't that nice?
• stale2002 9y ago
  > Face it: some form of taxation was going to appear no matter what. It's inevitable. And a retaliation from the US, via a similar trade tariff that exclusively targets EU companies, is also likely inevitable. Lets the trade wars being. I wonder who will come out ahead. > It also isn't a "shield from competition" Imagine if the US added a 20 dollar champagne tax. By definition, "real" champagne can literally only come from the Provence of champagne, France. But technically the law applies to US companies, perhaps ones that own a vineyard in France. Would you be OK with this theoretical tax? It is totally fair, and not targeted against anyone specific country! Hopefully we will get more "fair" taxes like these in the upcoming trade wars.