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With respect, you do not understand the logic behind taxes, much less the logic behind taxing international businesses. > The idea behind taxes is that you use
by braythwayt 7y ago
With respect, you do not understand the logic behind taxes, much less the logic behind taxing international businesses.
> The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service
You are framing taxes as if the government is a business selling people health care, fire protection, security, and infrastructure.
I benefit from infrastructure I don't personally use. For example, even if I am a healthy individual, I benefit from healthcare! Healthy people get and keep their jobs, get paid, and spend their money on Netflix, Uber, Lyft, and/or Disney. Lemme look... Yup, Netflix, Uber, Lyft, and Disney are all customers of my employer, who pays me, so I benefit indirectly from Healthcare.
That is one tiny example, but the actual principle behind taxation works this way: Everyone benefits indirectly from a functioning society.
(We sometimes tax people just for the things they use, but generally we do this to limit undesirable "tragedy of the commons" problems. Consumption taxes, vice taxes, and the issue of regressive taxation is outside the scope of this reply.)
The idea behind taxation is that everyone benefits, therefore everyone pays. Now we are talking about a company located outside of a country, benefitting from that country being a functioning economy.
Just as I benefit from infrastructure I don't use because I benefit from my country having a thriving, healthy populace with disposable income, so does the company selling things to the exact same populace.
Now just move this such that we are discussing France instead of Canada, and there is the actual logic: These internet companies benefit from France having a functioning economy with a populace that has disposable income to spend, so they should support that by paying taxes.
In sum, the flaw in your explanation begins with your model for why people and corporations pay taxes in the first place, and how they benefit from those taxes.
- AdrianB1 7y agoThe flaw of this argument that government is selling services is that the government is not selling, it is forcibly collecting money for some vague promises of services. When you buy something in the store the owner doesn't point a gun at your head asking for the money.
- braythwayt 7y agoYour reply is a great example of why talking about taxes in an open forum is often a waste of time. We start with a discussion about whether this one particular tax is reasonable or unreasonable because of jurisdiction issues, and before long you realize that a bunch of the people arguing against that tax don't really care about the jurisdiction issue, their real agenda is that they don't want any taxes, any governments, or any societies. You are entitled to your beliefs, of course, but you really shouldn't respond to me. You should just post at the top level that not only should France not tax internet giants, but it shouldn't tax its citizens or anyone else.
- AdrianB1 7y agoYou made the point of the government selling services, not about France taxes. I responded to that point.
- braythwayt 7y agoAh. Well, I was arguing that the government is NOT in the business of selling services, and that is why taxes for the mot part are not based on consumption. Ideally—from my perspective as a product member of the Socialist Republic of Kanuckistan—taxes based on consumption are not about “fairness” but about creating disincentives for undesirable exploitation of resources.
- ctlby 7y agoProsperity is causally prior to taxation, not the other way around. To quote the great Bryan Caplan, "It takes a colossal host to sustain colossal parasitism."