4 ms·

Would it be cheaper for those companies to walk away from european market?

• poooogles 8y ago
  Depends upon their European operations. Considering the size of the European market, probably not.
• thefounder 8y ago
  most of them make about 40-60% of revenue from Europe so go figure! Playing by the rules is not really that expensive. The fines they are getting are really small compared with the profits they are making.
  • repolfx 8y ago
    It depends very much on the definition of "walk away". Europeans use America-only firms all the time and can easily make cross border payments. There aren't really robust ways to stop US firms selling to the EU over the internet especially for services, which are excluded from tariffs via GATT. Whilst I don't think we'll see established firms "walk away" in the sense of closing down their EU offices, I think it's extremely likely that the next generation of startups will simply never choose to open offices in the EU to begin with. Sort of like how many companies ignore the Chinese market today because the problems that come with it offset the appeal of a large (much, much more captive) market.
    • claudius 8y ago
      > There aren't really robust ways to stop US firms selling to the EU over the internet especially for services, which are excluded from tariffs via GATT. It’s rather easy to seize transfers made to foreign companies in violation of a local law. So while that foreign company then wouldn’t have to have a presence in the EU, it also couldn’t receive payments from EU companies or customers. Much the same way the US will complain if you transfer funds out of the US to terrorists or drug lords or whoever is politically unfavourable today.
    • cageface 8y ago
      Or maybe more likely just wait until they have an established and successful business in the USA first and only then expand to Europe if it makes sense.
    • ckocagil 8y ago
      There are really robust ways of stopping American countries from selling to EU citizens. Financial transactions are easily tracked and blocked. So are websites. If nothing works, then the EU can stop trading and kick American payment companies out.
      • repolfx 8y ago
        There was an implicit assumption in my post that the EU wouldn't go full totalitarian and establish a new iron curtain. Yes, if it is willing to go down that route it can seal off people from America entirely. But the fact that people are even seriously proposing this is the best argument for Brexit yet.
  • tomtimtall 8y ago
    You are contradicting yourself. The fines are indeed small relative to the profits they are making. That’s exactly why playing by the rules is very expensive for them.
• baby 8y ago
  This comment is interesting as we have this "issue" of people running away from France no to pay taxes in their own country. When you don't want to play by the rules, can you afford to ignore them (legally)? Ethically it's obviously not cool, but if there is indeed a outflux of people due to heavy regulations then it becomes a problem for the country. Not sure if people running away because of taxes represent an important number (intuitively I feel like no)
  • growlist 8y ago
    I think the term is Tax Exile, and they weren't popular in the UK either, but I'm not sure anyone cares that much anymore after countless tax evasion type scandals. Short of reverting to Soviet style repression I'm not sure what you can do to force the rich to stay in France if they don't want to. Politicians always target the middle class as the rich can manipulate the system to avoid paying, and the poor have nothing for the government to steal.
• coldtea 8y ago
  The European market which is larger than the US market? I'd say not.
• jopsen 8y ago
  No, It would hopefully be cheaper to follow the law. If not I'll vote for higher fines :)