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I'm also Dutch, but I'm mainly frustrated that the press does a very poor job of explaining what is going on. Uber has its corporate head quarters for the EU i

I'm also Dutch, but I'm mainly frustrated that the press does a very poor job of explaining what is going on. Uber has its corporate head quarters for the EU in Amsterdam. For a company the size of Uber to have 50 different entities is not particularly special, you will find several other multinationals there with the same number. It makes sense to have one for each jurisdiction they operate in, for example. The term "shell companies" seems to imply something nefarious, and that may very well be the case, but in itself having 50 entities in The Netherlands is not really a sign of that. It's also important to point out that they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of "tax rulings". Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. In the US it can take over a year for them to get any certainty on what their tax bill would be for the previous year, and shareholders hate that uncertainty. No one thinks it's a good idea to compete in a "race to the bottom" of attractive tax laws, but as far as I'm concerned competing on better service is fair game. Many politicians screaming at The Netherlands tend to conveniently forget the part where their own country just delivers very poor service tax-wise.

beckman466 5y ago
> The term "shell companies" seems to imply something nefarious Well considering they are mostly used by big corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I seriously question your lack of critique here. Maybe the way to frame this is that tax avoidance (or in corporate speak: 'tax planning') has become horribly normalized by the media. I think most of the working class have no idea of the institutional terrorism that is going on on a daily basis, against their own interests. They are gaslit with propaganda day in day out (I'm looking at you Murdoch, yet also liberal news gives terrible systemic critiques - so you could argue that's actually worse since they claim to be a fair and objective news source). Your arguments speak much too kindly about these firms (and the bourgeois government institutions that supposedly 'democratically' govern them), who are oh so happy to create as many 'externalities' as possible. > It's also important to point out that they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of "tax rulings". Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. The way you're framing it, it sounds like you think this makes it fairer? The problem remains: multinational capitalist firms/corporations are leeches on the working class and are not adequately contributing back to society.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Well considering they are usually used by corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I question your lack of critique here. Regardless of what the effective tax rate paid is having a corporate entity per country you operate in greatly simplifies the regulatory compliance situation for taxes, labor laws and any specific laws that cover whatever your business is.
- JI00912 5y ago
  > Well considering they are usually used by corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I seriously question your lack of critique here. No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. > institutional terrorism that is going on on a daily basis Ummm... > They are gaslit with propaganda Eh take a hard look in the mirror. The marxist hate machine has never helped anyone.
  - cowsandmilk 5y ago
    > No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. This argument is just “everyone does it.” The 50 companies likely has little to do with taxes; let’s say it is for liability. Is that a good thing? The profits move out of a company, leaving nothing for when others are seeking damages. Is that a positive?
    - JI00912 5y ago
      > This argument is just “everyone does it.” No it isn't. That's not the argument at all. You're just projecting whatever you want to say on what you're reading.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. Ummm... that's what I said. That's my point. It's become normalized for corporations to not take responsibility. The working class always ends up paying the price here. Collectively we in the working class now expect corporations to treat us badly and that we have to accept this abusive behavior. In the context of more and more of the working class now starting to work in "non-jobs" in the gig economy, this current trajectory is becoming a bigger and bigger nightmare for the working class all over the world (see Nomadland, Sorry to Bother You, The True Cost, Blood in the Mobile, Push (Fredrik Gertten)). I argue that, along with banking and other rentierist institutions [1], tech corporations are a parasite on society because they monopolize and destroy our shared inheritance, and try to pretend they are immune to regulation because they see themselves as lone geniuses [2]. "By virtue of their position as digital middlemen, Silicon Valley companies are able to extract vast amounts of capital from all over the world. The most salient example is Apple: recently crowned the world’s most valuable company, Apple rakes in enormous quarterly profits even as the Chinese workers who actually assemble its products are driven to suicide. Whereas we were once led to believe that the network society would produce an egalitarian world, we increasingly see tech as a machine for the commodification of information itself. Something that has the potential to be abundant is made artificially scarce, because capital finds it profitable to enclose the digital commons and dictate its terms of access. Facebook wants a monopoly over your social network so it can show you ads; Google is the internet’s directory; Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music are your tollbooths for cultural production; Amazon is the gateway for your retail needs. These corporations serve social functions integral to modern life, in ways similar to industries that were nationalised in the past — and yet, not only are they not publicly owned, they are immune to any sort of democratic control." [3] [1] the UK working class pays £192,000,000 per day in interest payments to banks (we essentially pay extortionate 'rent' for the money we use in our daily lives): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY [2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-enduring-great-man-myth/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-end... [3] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
p0la 5y ago
As a French entrepreneur, I was advised several times to move my HQ to the Netherlands because of the extremely low taxes on intellectual property. The HQ can invoice european subsidies/entities for the usage of the brand as well as the IP of internal software or patents. You calibrate this so that European subsidies makes little to no profit, so you don’t pay any local tax. Then, what amounts essentially to the profit of all your European subsidies is brought back to your NL headquarters under “revenue from intellectual property” on which you pay ~ no tax (I’ve been told around 5%). I’m not an expert in taxes and I have not looked into this in details so this may all be wrong, but it’s advice we got from top 10 EU lawyer firms. It was presented to us as a tax “optimisation” scheme.
- speleding 5y ago
  There is indeed only a 5% tax on gains that can directly be attributed to innovation, which is probably what you are referring to. It's intended to give innovative companies a leg up against ones that don't innovate, and aimed to support start-ups. This is a good idea in itself, but, of course, it's quite tricky to establish what part of profit is really owing to innovation, and several tax lawyers have found ways to abuse the scheme. By now that loophole has been mostly closed, but there will always be new ideas by politicians that will subsequently be abused, it's not really because they wanted to become a tax haven.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
> they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of "tax rulings". Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. "They don't come to the Netherlands because the tax rate is low, but because they can negotiate an extremely low tax rate just for themselves"
- oever 5y ago
  "They don't come to the Netherlands because the tax rate is low, but because they can negotiate an extremely low secret tax rate just for themselves"

beckman466 5y ago

> The term "shell companies" seems to imply something nefarious Well considering they are mostly used by big corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I seriously question your lack of critique here. Maybe the way to frame this is that tax avoidance (or in corporate speak: 'tax planning') has become horribly normalized by the media. I think most of the working class have no idea of the institutional terrorism that is going on on a daily basis, against their own interests. They are gaslit with propaganda day in day out (I'm looking at you Murdoch, yet also liberal news gives terrible systemic critiques - so you could argue that's actually worse since they claim to be a fair and objective news source). Your arguments speak much too kindly about these firms (and the bourgeois government institutions that supposedly 'democratically' govern them), who are oh so happy to create as many 'externalities' as possible. > It's also important to point out that they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of "tax rulings". Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. The way you're framing it, it sounds like you think this makes it fairer? The problem remains: multinational capitalist firms/corporations are leeches on the working class and are not adequately contributing back to society.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>Well considering they are usually used by corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I question your lack of critique here. Regardless of what the effective tax rate paid is having a corporate entity per country you operate in greatly simplifies the regulatory compliance situation for taxes, labor laws and any specific laws that cover whatever your business is.
JI00912 5y ago
> Well considering they are usually used by corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I seriously question your lack of critique here. No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. > institutional terrorism that is going on on a daily basis Ummm... > They are gaslit with propaganda Eh take a hard look in the mirror. The marxist hate machine has never helped anyone.
- cowsandmilk 5y ago
  > No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. This argument is just “everyone does it.” The 50 companies likely has little to do with taxes; let’s say it is for liability. Is that a good thing? The profits move out of a company, leaving nothing for when others are seeking damages. Is that a positive?
  - JI00912 5y ago
    > This argument is just “everyone does it.” No it isn't. That's not the argument at all. You're just projecting whatever you want to say on what you're reading.
- beckman466 5y ago
  > No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. Ummm... that's what I said. That's my point. It's become normalized for corporations to not take responsibility. The working class always ends up paying the price here. Collectively we in the working class now expect corporations to treat us badly and that we have to accept this abusive behavior. In the context of more and more of the working class now starting to work in "non-jobs" in the gig economy, this current trajectory is becoming a bigger and bigger nightmare for the working class all over the world (see Nomadland, Sorry to Bother You, The True Cost, Blood in the Mobile, Push (Fredrik Gertten)). I argue that, along with banking and other rentierist institutions [1], tech corporations are a parasite on society because they monopolize and destroy our shared inheritance, and try to pretend they are immune to regulation because they see themselves as lone geniuses [2]. "By virtue of their position as digital middlemen, Silicon Valley companies are able to extract vast amounts of capital from all over the world. The most salient example is Apple: recently crowned the world’s most valuable company, Apple rakes in enormous quarterly profits even as the Chinese workers who actually assemble its products are driven to suicide. Whereas we were once led to believe that the network society would produce an egalitarian world, we increasingly see tech as a machine for the commodification of information itself. Something that has the potential to be abundant is made artificially scarce, because capital finds it profitable to enclose the digital commons and dictate its terms of access. Facebook wants a monopoly over your social network so it can show you ads; Google is the internet’s directory; Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music are your tollbooths for cultural production; Amazon is the gateway for your retail needs. These corporations serve social functions integral to modern life, in ways similar to industries that were nationalised in the past — and yet, not only are they not publicly owned, they are immune to any sort of democratic control." [3] [1] the UK working class pays £192,000,000 per day in interest payments to banks (we essentially pay extortionate 'rent' for the money we use in our daily lives): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY [2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-enduring-great-man-myth/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-end... [3] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley

p0la 5y ago

As a French entrepreneur, I was advised several times to move my HQ to the Netherlands because of the extremely low taxes on intellectual property. The HQ can invoice european subsidies/entities for the usage of the brand as well as the IP of internal software or patents. You calibrate this so that European subsidies makes little to no profit, so you don’t pay any local tax. Then, what amounts essentially to the profit of all your European subsidies is brought back to your NL headquarters under “revenue from intellectual property” on which you pay ~ no tax (I’ve been told around 5%). I’m not an expert in taxes and I have not looked into this in details so this may all be wrong, but it’s advice we got from top 10 EU lawyer firms. It was presented to us as a tax “optimisation” scheme.

speleding 5y ago
There is indeed only a 5% tax on gains that can directly be attributed to innovation, which is probably what you are referring to. It's intended to give innovative companies a leg up against ones that don't innovate, and aimed to support start-ups. This is a good idea in itself, but, of course, it's quite tricky to establish what part of profit is really owing to innovation, and several tax lawyers have found ways to abuse the scheme. By now that loophole has been mostly closed, but there will always be new ideas by politicians that will subsequently be abused, it's not really because they wanted to become a tax haven.

benhurmarcel 5y ago

> they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of "tax rulings". Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. "They don't come to the Netherlands because the tax rate is low, but because they can negotiate an extremely low tax rate just for themselves"

oever 5y ago
"They don't come to the Netherlands because the tax rate is low, but because they can negotiate an extremely low secret tax rate just for themselves"