> Why on earth would it be 10% of their world wide income and not their UK-based income? These politicians really think they have more power than they really do

> Why on earth would it be 10% of their world wide income and not their UK-based income? These politicians really think they have more power than they really do. Because fines are not a tax, they exist as a punishment for bad behaviour, so the question should really be "why not 100% of worldwide income?" (Or 200%, because a year of income is arbitrary; or "why not enough to bankrupt the company?" because profit, income, and bank balance are all different things, etc.) The reason for only 10% is that this is to signal "we're still playing cooperate" in game theory, just with a baked-in rough (and rounded) guess of what big tech's typical income distribution is, in order to avoid shenanigans during court cases where e.g. someone tries to argue with creative accounting that their UK revenue is less than it really is.