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> Facebook is clearly a US company. Founded and HQ'd in the US, so they should be paying US taxes. If most of the advertisers are outside the US, most of the u

> Facebook is clearly a US company. Founded and HQ'd in the US, so they should be paying US taxes. If most of the advertisers are outside the US, most of the users are outside the US, and most of the servers are outside the US, I think you will agree that it's not reasonable to say ALL of the profit should be taxed in the US. Which part of the profit should go where is an endless debate among pundits, politicians and academics.

raiyu 7y ago
Except Facebook makes most of its money from US users not from international users. Also hard to argue that their campus that houses the majority of their employees in the US isn’t the one generating the IP.
- speleding 7y ago
  > Except Facebook makes most of its money from US users not from international users. Source? 96.75% of the world population is outside the US, of Facebook users it will be a smaller percentage, but it seems highly unlikely that most of the revenue will come from such a narrow base.
  - thfuran 7y ago
    Does China use facebook? Don't they have their own thing?
  - luckylion 7y ago
    What a weird way to approach that claim. The population inside or outside the USA plays a tiny role. a) China and Russia aren't involved, so strike 2bn from that b) it's not about people "existing", it's about people being a customer (or product, whatever view you prefer), facebook is obviously more widespread in a first world, high tech society where practically everyone has a smartphone than in some thirld world country where electricity is rare and unstable and c) revenue per user. statista [1] claims it's much, much higher than in the rest of the world. With that coming in at a 3:1 or 4:1 or even 5:1, that alone would make the US a heavy weight in revenue. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
- harryh 7y ago
  Those things are true, but not really the point. 1) The entire issue here is about international revenue not US revenue. 2) Your second point is true but this IP was then sold to a subsidiary. The dispute is about the price paid in this sale, not about the origin of the IP.
ahouse101 7y ago
Most of their servers aren't outside the US, though. The majority (not plurality, the majority) of datacenters are here.

raiyu 7y ago

Except Facebook makes most of its money from US users not from international users. Also hard to argue that their campus that houses the majority of their employees in the US isn’t the one generating the IP.

speleding 7y ago
> Except Facebook makes most of its money from US users not from international users. Source? 96.75% of the world population is outside the US, of Facebook users it will be a smaller percentage, but it seems highly unlikely that most of the revenue will come from such a narrow base.
- thfuran 7y ago
  Does China use facebook? Don't they have their own thing?
- luckylion 7y ago
  What a weird way to approach that claim. The population inside or outside the USA plays a tiny role. a) China and Russia aren't involved, so strike 2bn from that b) it's not about people "existing", it's about people being a customer (or product, whatever view you prefer), facebook is obviously more widespread in a first world, high tech society where practically everyone has a smartphone than in some thirld world country where electricity is rare and unstable and c) revenue per user. statista [1] claims it's much, much higher than in the rest of the world. With that coming in at a 3:1 or 4:1 or even 5:1, that alone would make the US a heavy weight in revenue. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
harryh 7y ago
Those things are true, but not really the point. 1) The entire issue here is about international revenue not US revenue. 2) Your second point is true but this IP was then sold to a subsidiary. The dispute is about the price paid in this sale, not about the origin of the IP.

ahouse101 7y ago

Most of their servers aren't outside the US, though. The majority (not plurality, the majority) of datacenters are here.