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> Wasn't Uber or some other US company found doing something similar? Airbnb, they had to pay like 70k of tax a few years ago. There are employees who pay as m

> Wasn't Uber or some other US company found doing something similar? Airbnb, they had to pay like 70k of tax a few years ago. There are employees who pay as much tax as single filers lol They paid 18% less tax in 2016 than in 2013 while the number of flats available on the site went from 30k to 300k https://www.lesechos.fr/2016/08/airbnb-na-paye-que-69168-euros-dimpots-en-france-213253 https://www.lesechos.fr/2016/08/airbnb-na-paye-que-69168-eur...

scotty79 2y ago
All spending should be taxed instead of income. Income is too easy to move and hide. Spending tax could be unified framework encompassing all financial activity. If you purchase anything, labor, imports, energy, stock, politicians, you should be taxed. Spending is the moment when the money shows its ugly head and does harm.
- thrw42A8N 2y ago
  Revenue tax? We had that before the fall of the wall - not again please. The VAT system works well and should be used more.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    Purchase tax would work like reverse VAT. Companies could be awarded tax credits for their sales (not 100% though) and pay tax on their purchases. This would be harder to evade and additionally incentivise companies to do more with less which might be good for environmental transition.
    - thrw42A8N 2y ago
      Why not 100%? How is that even supposed to work in low-margin markets like construction, where the profit is 100x less than the costs, so even 1% tax would erase it? But any markets really, this makes innovation and business so risky that I'd probably close down my IT company too.
      - scotty79 2y ago
        The strength of markets is that they adjust to environment. Taxation is a part of the environment. Taxation would be just priced in. Why would it be risky to pay some percentage more on what you spend but not pay income tax at all?
        thrw42A8N 2y ago
        Markets will adjust, sure. It will be priced in, but that's the problem. They will become less efficient, quality will be worse, everything will be slower, more risk averse, and thus more expensive to the customer - that is necessary to survive in this new environment. That also means that people's income gets lower and grows slower. It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually going to make money or not. European states set very draconian rules like 1% daily interest on unpaid taxes - no way I'm taking this shit on. Just do the same thing but with VAT...
        scotty79 2y ago
        Two factors are responsible for the bulk ens*ttification of the markets: any barriers to competition and information asymmetry between purchaser and seller. Taxation is not a factor unless it's done with too much micromanagement that incentivises doing weird things to your product/service to avoid higher tax. VAT is already a purchase tax, just collected from the end consumer. You could just raise VAT and do away with income tax. But since the burden is on the end consumer only (not along the chain, because of 100% deductions) it would have to be raised very high. And VAT is with us long enough that many ways to exploit its edge cases were discovered. General purchase tax collected at all steps of production chain could spread the tax burden away from final consumer to the people who exploit them (aka businessmen) thus fulfilling the role that income tax currently fulfills. It would also have way less edge cases and could replace things like import tariffs and social security fees, excise taxes and many more. > It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually going to make money or not. That's the inherent risk of business. You have to decide if it's worth it regardless of whether a server costs you $x or $x+10% purchase tax. > European states set very draconian rules like 1% daily interest on unpaid taxes - no way I'm taking this shit on. You would never have unpaid taxes because they'd be automatically collected by the bank at the moment of purchase. If you don't have money to pay for purchase tax you don't have money to make a purchase. > Just do the same thing but with VAT... We could do some of that if we reduced VAT deductions from 100%. But it would be worse because VAT is very limited and thus has a lot of edge cases where it comes in contact in systems outside it's domain. Those can be used to get away from paying by doing superfluous operations.
    - Aunche 2y ago
      ...or you can just use a VAT, which are also paid at purchase. Tech companies have high margins and low expenses, so if the point is to tax tech companies, taxing purchases and giving a credit to sales is literally the exact opposite of what you want to do.
      - scotty79 2y ago
        VAT with 100% deduction places entire tax burden on the end consumer. Income tax aims to extract additional tax from entities that extract money from consumers for investors. VAT could do a lot of the same things that I'm proposing (if the deductions weren't 100%) but is limited in scope. And because of that it has a lot of interfaces to other domains like real estate, import, labor, financial intruments. Interfaces that can be exploited to avoid paying taxes. General purchase tax could replace all taxes and fees transfered from the markets to governments (and effectively goverment managed buckets like social security or public healthcare). Taxes have this strong moral objection that they are punishment for creating value. Purchase tax could help with that by ostensibly being punishment for using up value not for creating value. It might also compose well with transition to stable state economy that will have to replace old economy based on unbounded growth.
        thrw42A8N 2y ago
        Income taxes make everything less straight forward, more risky, more costly, just harder. Small companies are incredibly disadvantaged. If most/all income taxation could be avoided, it potentially translates to incredible productivity gains. What are the reasons to tax corporate income? The usual reason is so that it doesn't spend the money on executive wages, parties, and so on. The less public reason is so that it doesn't extract all money to a foreign corporation through license/patent fees (dividends are taxed more). We can do so much more today with the computers we have than the primitive taxation schemes of 1980s Europe. We already have the infrastructure to audit corporate spending and investments - let's just keep using that to avoid the lavish parties and otherwise not serving the shareholders as efficiently as possible. Let's cap wages at 200k - if you want more, get some stock options and share the risk. Any out of country value transfer (money, gold, financial assets...) is taxed 50% (each individual gets an exemption up to 100k/year). Add a 5% inflation rate to discourage cash hoarding. Now the fun stuff - let's use Land-Value Tax and Progressive Value Added Tax - VAT with progressive rate based on item class and price. Zero rate on basic needs in raw form + everyday items like hygiene. Everything is calculated automatically using the country's E-Cash Register system - absolutely zero bureaucracy, everything is clear upfront and there is no forward risk created by taxation. And it's super hard to avoid taxes when they won't give you the new Lambo unless you pay right there and now. Most EU countries already have all of the infrastructure in place. Though this scheme would work best in a borderless, continent-wide European state.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Correct, and it could be implemented as a power law formula that makes it impossible for the super rich to avoid tax (since they are the only ones that can spend a lot). It also aligns incentives with environmentalism and reducing waste and consumption. And poorer people are automatically exempted from tax since the power law formula parameters be set to slowly ramp up. This is also easily accomplished now that almost all payments are happening digitally, assigned to a taxpayer ID#. We can easily replace a W-2 or 1099 with total spending instead of taxing working. Of course, this should also be paired with similarly designed land value and estate taxes to disincentivize hoarding.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets? Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of. For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me, or maybe they lease it to me. I'm not a tax lawyer but it's pretty easy to see the many loopholes in alternative tax proposals.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      >So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets? Where are you getting this from? Sales tax has nothing to do with one's assets. Also, land value taxes make hiding assets moot, since all real assets have to be stored on land. Of course, copyright protections would need to be reformed to be for far shorter durations of time. >Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of. Why should LLC's be exempt from the tax? >For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me, How does this help? You are still purchasing the item. If you are referring to purchasing it with cash and committing tax evasion, the same is possible with income tax today. >or maybe they lease it to me. Renting something is still considered a sale. You get charged sales tax at hotels. Renting apartments is not usually subject to sales tax, but that is a policy choice.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  Isn’t that a hugely regressive tax?
  - scotty79 2y ago
    I don't think so. Rich people buy vastly more. Not just food, shelter and entertainment but also real estate, entire companies and financial instruments. They'd end up paying vastly more tax.
    - betaby 2y ago
      > Rich people buy vastly more Not enough, especially since everything is business expense for them.
      - scotty79 2y ago
        That's the point. With purchase tax business expenses would be taxed similarly to private expenses. At least in the same framework.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      If you add financial instruments into the tax (what is a tax on investing, not spending), it will become proportional. What is still not very good. This blind kind of tax also has horrible impact on the production of goods with high added value.
      - scotty79 2y ago
        > what is a tax on investing, not spending Money changes hands so it's taxed with a purchase tax as a general rule. > it will become proportional. What is still not very good. Progressive tax currently is just a theory. Rich actually pay regressive tax. I'd take proprtional tax over ostensibly progressive tax but in reality regressive tax any day.
        marcosdumay 2y ago
thrw42A8N 2y ago
> They paid 18% less tax in 2016 than in 2013 while the number of flats available on the site went from 30k to 300k Completely meaningless without also saying what their costs and investments were.
- lm28469 2y ago
  Well no that's not really what happens, what happens is that legally the french entity is just a service provider for the irish HQ. They pretend it's a simple marketing agency and that the real value is provided by the irish entity
  - thrw42A8N 2y ago
    Doesn't matter - you can't make any judgement without knowing these numbers. They may have actually paid a higher tax rate than previously - we don't know.
    - lm28469 2y ago
      Funny how it works, they lose money everywhere but one of the smallest country they operate in banks 50% of their worldwide revenues, it probably is just a coincidence that this is a tax heaven... we just don't know I guess The French branch made 160k of profit while the Irish branch made more than all the other EU countries combined FYI: france is the second market for airbnb after the US... do you really think they would even bother if they did make 160k there when they make 300m+ per year globally ? Do you really think their second market nets them < 0.1% of their total net income ? Do you really think the most touristic country in the world in absolute numbers brings 160k euros per year to airbnb ? I dont't know much but I'm not a fool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/airbnb-statistics/ https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/airbnb-stat... https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1127/1418779-revenues-at-irish-arm-of-airbnb-up-almost-50-last-year/ https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1127/1418779-revenues-... https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/airbnb-ireland-records-pre-tax-profits-of-e116-85-million-1398344.html https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/airbnb-ireland-records-...

scotty79 2y ago

All spending should be taxed instead of income. Income is too easy to move and hide. Spending tax could be unified framework encompassing all financial activity. If you purchase anything, labor, imports, energy, stock, politicians, you should be taxed. Spending is the moment when the money shows its ugly head and does harm.

thrw42A8N 2y ago
Revenue tax? We had that before the fall of the wall - not again please. The VAT system works well and should be used more.
- scotty79 2y ago
  Purchase tax would work like reverse VAT. Companies could be awarded tax credits for their sales (not 100% though) and pay tax on their purchases. This would be harder to evade and additionally incentivise companies to do more with less which might be good for environmental transition.
  - thrw42A8N 2y ago
    Why not 100%? How is that even supposed to work in low-margin markets like construction, where the profit is 100x less than the costs, so even 1% tax would erase it? But any markets really, this makes innovation and business so risky that I'd probably close down my IT company too.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      The strength of markets is that they adjust to environment. Taxation is a part of the environment. Taxation would be just priced in. Why would it be risky to pay some percentage more on what you spend but not pay income tax at all?
      - thrw42A8N 2y ago
        Markets will adjust, sure. It will be priced in, but that's the problem. They will become less efficient, quality will be worse, everything will be slower, more risk averse, and thus more expensive to the customer - that is necessary to survive in this new environment. That also means that people's income gets lower and grows slower. It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually going to make money or not. European states set very draconian rules like 1% daily interest on unpaid taxes - no way I'm taking this shit on. Just do the same thing but with VAT...
        scotty79 2y ago
        Two factors are responsible for the bulk ens*ttification of the markets: any barriers to competition and information asymmetry between purchaser and seller. Taxation is not a factor unless it's done with too much micromanagement that incentivises doing weird things to your product/service to avoid higher tax. VAT is already a purchase tax, just collected from the end consumer. You could just raise VAT and do away with income tax. But since the burden is on the end consumer only (not along the chain, because of 100% deductions) it would have to be raised very high. And VAT is with us long enough that many ways to exploit its edge cases were discovered. General purchase tax collected at all steps of production chain could spread the tax burden away from final consumer to the people who exploit them (aka businessmen) thus fulfilling the role that income tax currently fulfills. It would also have way less edge cases and could replace things like import tariffs and social security fees, excise taxes and many more. > It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually going to make money or not. That's the inherent risk of business. You have to decide if it's worth it regardless of whether a server costs you $x or $x+10% purchase tax. > European states set very draconian rules like 1% daily interest on unpaid taxes - no way I'm taking this shit on. You would never have unpaid taxes because they'd be automatically collected by the bank at the moment of purchase. If you don't have money to pay for purchase tax you don't have money to make a purchase. > Just do the same thing but with VAT... We could do some of that if we reduced VAT deductions from 100%. But it would be worse because VAT is very limited and thus has a lot of edge cases where it comes in contact in systems outside it's domain. Those can be used to get away from paying by doing superfluous operations.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    ...or you can just use a VAT, which are also paid at purchase. Tech companies have high margins and low expenses, so if the point is to tax tech companies, taxing purchases and giving a credit to sales is literally the exact opposite of what you want to do.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      VAT with 100% deduction places entire tax burden on the end consumer. Income tax aims to extract additional tax from entities that extract money from consumers for investors. VAT could do a lot of the same things that I'm proposing (if the deductions weren't 100%) but is limited in scope. And because of that it has a lot of interfaces to other domains like real estate, import, labor, financial intruments. Interfaces that can be exploited to avoid paying taxes. General purchase tax could replace all taxes and fees transfered from the markets to governments (and effectively goverment managed buckets like social security or public healthcare). Taxes have this strong moral objection that they are punishment for creating value. Purchase tax could help with that by ostensibly being punishment for using up value not for creating value. It might also compose well with transition to stable state economy that will have to replace old economy based on unbounded growth.
      - thrw42A8N 2y ago
        Income taxes make everything less straight forward, more risky, more costly, just harder. Small companies are incredibly disadvantaged. If most/all income taxation could be avoided, it potentially translates to incredible productivity gains. What are the reasons to tax corporate income? The usual reason is so that it doesn't spend the money on executive wages, parties, and so on. The less public reason is so that it doesn't extract all money to a foreign corporation through license/patent fees (dividends are taxed more). We can do so much more today with the computers we have than the primitive taxation schemes of 1980s Europe. We already have the infrastructure to audit corporate spending and investments - let's just keep using that to avoid the lavish parties and otherwise not serving the shareholders as efficiently as possible. Let's cap wages at 200k - if you want more, get some stock options and share the risk. Any out of country value transfer (money, gold, financial assets...) is taxed 50% (each individual gets an exemption up to 100k/year). Add a 5% inflation rate to discourage cash hoarding. Now the fun stuff - let's use Land-Value Tax and Progressive Value Added Tax - VAT with progressive rate based on item class and price. Zero rate on basic needs in raw form + everyday items like hygiene. Everything is calculated automatically using the country's E-Cash Register system - absolutely zero bureaucracy, everything is clear upfront and there is no forward risk created by taxation. And it's super hard to avoid taxes when they won't give you the new Lambo unless you pay right there and now. Most EU countries already have all of the infrastructure in place. Though this scheme would work best in a borderless, continent-wide European state.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
Correct, and it could be implemented as a power law formula that makes it impossible for the super rich to avoid tax (since they are the only ones that can spend a lot). It also aligns incentives with environmentalism and reducing waste and consumption. And poorer people are automatically exempted from tax since the power law formula parameters be set to slowly ramp up. This is also easily accomplished now that almost all payments are happening digitally, assigned to a taxpayer ID#. We can easily replace a W-2 or 1099 with total spending instead of taxing working. Of course, this should also be paired with similarly designed land value and estate taxes to disincentivize hoarding.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets? Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of. For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me, or maybe they lease it to me. I'm not a tax lawyer but it's pretty easy to see the many loopholes in alternative tax proposals.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets? Where are you getting this from? Sales tax has nothing to do with one's assets. Also, land value taxes make hiding assets moot, since all real assets have to be stored on land. Of course, copyright protections would need to be reformed to be for far shorter durations of time. >Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of. Why should LLC's be exempt from the tax? >For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me, How does this help? You are still purchasing the item. If you are referring to purchasing it with cash and committing tax evasion, the same is possible with income tax today. >or maybe they lease it to me. Renting something is still considered a sale. You get charged sales tax at hotels. Renting apartments is not usually subject to sales tax, but that is a policy choice.
vlovich123 2y ago
Isn’t that a hugely regressive tax?
- scotty79 2y ago
  I don't think so. Rich people buy vastly more. Not just food, shelter and entertainment but also real estate, entire companies and financial instruments. They'd end up paying vastly more tax.
  - betaby 2y ago
    > Rich people buy vastly more Not enough, especially since everything is business expense for them.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      That's the point. With purchase tax business expenses would be taxed similarly to private expenses. At least in the same framework.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    If you add financial instruments into the tax (what is a tax on investing, not spending), it will become proportional. What is still not very good. This blind kind of tax also has horrible impact on the production of goods with high added value.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      > what is a tax on investing, not spending Money changes hands so it's taxed with a purchase tax as a general rule. > it will become proportional. What is still not very good. Progressive tax currently is just a theory. Rich actually pay regressive tax. I'd take proprtional tax over ostensibly progressive tax but in reality regressive tax any day.
      - marcosdumay 2y ago

thrw42A8N 2y ago

> They paid 18% less tax in 2016 than in 2013 while the number of flats available on the site went from 30k to 300k Completely meaningless without also saying what their costs and investments were.

lm28469 2y ago
Well no that's not really what happens, what happens is that legally the french entity is just a service provider for the irish HQ. They pretend it's a simple marketing agency and that the real value is provided by the irish entity
- thrw42A8N 2y ago
  Doesn't matter - you can't make any judgement without knowing these numbers. They may have actually paid a higher tax rate than previously - we don't know.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    Funny how it works, they lose money everywhere but one of the smallest country they operate in banks 50% of their worldwide revenues, it probably is just a coincidence that this is a tax heaven... we just don't know I guess The French branch made 160k of profit while the Irish branch made more than all the other EU countries combined FYI: france is the second market for airbnb after the US... do you really think they would even bother if they did make 160k there when they make 300m+ per year globally ? Do you really think their second market nets them < 0.1% of their total net income ? Do you really think the most touristic country in the world in absolute numbers brings 160k euros per year to airbnb ? I dont't know much but I'm not a fool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/airbnb-statistics/ https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/airbnb-stat... https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1127/1418779-revenues-at-irish-arm-of-airbnb-up-almost-50-last-year/ https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1127/1418779-revenues-... https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/airbnb-ireland-records-pre-tax-profits-of-e116-85-million-1398344.html https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/airbnb-ireland-records-...