Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#81

Post by 6stringmerc » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #37

bambax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about American law, but in French the notion exists and is called "abus de droit"; just because you can do something "in general", you can't do it with the specific purpose of circumventing another legal obligation. For example, as an Irish company, you can open a subsidiary in France to do business in France. That's a right. But if you're doing business in France essentially, you can't make the French com…

In America, there's at least one clear example of this - laws against "structuring". Basically, they say that it's criminal to arrange financial transactions with the purpose of avoiding laws about financial transactions. As an example, banks are required to report all deposits of $20,000. It's a right to deposit $19,999 into a bank account, nothing wrong there. But to deposit $19,999 five times in a row, rather than…

It's $10,000 and that's what led to former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert being investigated regarding his payments of hush money. He was actively trying to circumvent the controls. That's against the law. Just a clarification, having taken anti-money laundering compliance courses on occasion.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#82

Post by mizchief2 » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

If I were a big enough company like google, I would tell the French gov. to fuck off and block any access to Google services from French IP addresses. Then once the people throw out the corrupt politicians making these laws I would consider doing business in that country again.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#83

Post by stuaxo » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

puzzle wrote: post #74

nametakenobv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes money in France. Given France's economy size, it's probably billions. They need to pay taxes to the french government for the privilege of doing business there, so the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous.

Google sells ads through auctions, primarily. Do the auctions take place in France?

One would imagine, that these are adverts served to French people by companies that want to sell products in France.

The advert cost is based on views (I.E. eyeballs, of said French people in France).

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#84

Post by MengerSponge » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

ctrlalt_g wrote: post #60

tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" That's basically how all Anglo-Saxon (including the US) law, i.e. case law, looks like.

My moment of epiphany and shock in law school was on realizing that right and wrong don't exist. As my professor used to say, "It's all theater."

It's both a little more subtle than that and exactly that simple. You can't legislate "right and wrong" (although we try), but that doesn't mean they can't be defined by and imposed by a society. (the sanctions will generally be different from what the state could impose)

For the amount of love Hayek gets in these circles, I'm surprised there isn't more focus on Law, Legislation and Liberty

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#85

Post by omni » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #42

Bartweiss wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, there's at least one clear example of this - laws against "structuring". Basically, they say that it's criminal to arrange financial transactions with the purpose of avoiding laws about financial transactions. As an example, banks are required to report all deposits of $20,000. It's a right to deposit $19,999 into a bank account, nothing wrong there. But to deposit $19,999 five times in a row, rather than…

Structuring laws are highly controversial and have caused huge amounts of pain for innocent people who were just legitimately trying to reduce their paperwork burden. They're bad laws.

Do you have any other examples which you think are bad? The $19,999 example seems pretty reasonable to me.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#86

Post by threatofrain » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #20

ersii wrote: post #4

"Several have been accused of using legal methods to minimise their tax bills." Since when is it illegal to follow the law? Sure, we all have different opinions on the legal gray areas and of whether certain or all laws are legitimate and to what extent - but come on, that quote is just ridiculous.

Don't know about American law, but in French the notion exists and is called "abus de droit"; just because you can do something "in general", you can't do it with the specific purpose of circumventing another legal obligation. For example, as an Irish company, you can open a subsidiary in France to do business in France. That's a right. But if you're doing business in France essentially, you can't make the French com…

Knowing whether something is illegal ahead of time, and the rejection of retroactive judgment and thus capricious power were supposed to be innovations of western law. But the reality is that government does what government wants, and justifies it post-fact.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#87

Post by DannyBee » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #67

DannyBee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should look closer at the history of the paris office and why it exists. It's tremendously arrogant to think it "needs" to be there. It wasn't there for quite a long time, and i doubt it "needs" to be there.

They've had an office in Paris since 2002, for business. Maybe you're talking about their engineering office. You might think they made it to please politicians, but I think the real reasons is for recruitment. There are many talented engineers in France, some of them not willing to move to Zurich, London or Silicon Valley. If they want a chance to hire them they need an office in France. Anyway, supposing they get r…

Yes, they've had a business office, that precisely noone cares about :)

"You might think they made it to please politicians"

This is not even a secret. The original office existed because of certain folks not wanting to relocate, but it was only ever grown to please politicians. It was even made into a media event with eric schmidt and the president of france.

"but I think the real reasons is for recruitment"

This is false, sorry. I wish it wasn't. As I said, i'm pretty sure this isn't even secret.

"If they want a chance to hire them they need an office in France."

I'm just going to be blunt here: They did okay without having to hire them before, they would do okay without having to hire them afterwards.

This is not a knock on french engineering folks, really, it's more a statement "there is sufficiently high quality supply of engineers elsewhere that it is not actually necessary to be there".

Heck, the engineers in france are probably even significantly more expensive than elsewhere, too.

The office was not made, or expanded, for recruitment. It was, like a lot of other companies do, to have skin in the game.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#88

Post by yardie » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #41

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution: Get rid of tax law as one of the major sub-industries of the legal profession. When I no longer need a lawyer to submit my taxes, I'll start caring about corporate tax loopholes.

This isn't really about tax loopholes. It's about France being uncompetitive and unwilling to change. Google advertisers sign contracts with a company in Ireland because Ireland decided to effectively not apply corporation taxes (i.e. use a low rate and allow a variety of schemes that reduce the real rate even further). They did this fully knowingly ... the policy has been popular with voters ... because they wanted…

Ireland got hit really hard during the GFC they were in a big deficit like many other countries and couldn't pay their creditors. They went to the ECB to ask for more money. The ECB called it and said you aren't charging enough taxes to sustain the government. So they did.

* Taxes are paid wherever you do business. If you're a EU-based company doing business in the US guess what you don't pay VAT. But you'll certainly pay US taxes on that transaction.

* Those accountants are going to have to show that taxes were paid somewhere. Whether it be in France, Ireland, or the UK. They've been closing loopholes like the double-Irish sandwich and I'm fairly sure the accountants knew this day was going to come. Unlike Ireland and the UK, France, Germany, and Italy have been very aggressive about going after big companies as a public spectacle. Even if they don't find anything. It keeps smaller companies that may be doing the same inline.

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#89

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

0xFFC wrote: post #26

Idk, but I feel Google is under tremendous pressure right now.Oracle likely going to win (they have best legal team in whole industry). Europe will hit Google with antitrust and now this.Microsot is coming for them, and they(Microsoft) positioned themselves very well. Maybe I don't realize correctly, but it seems Google is going to have hard time with all of this.

When you couple that with Google's internal issues in terms of maintaining ad revenue, and not finding a lot of successful alternative revenue streams as well... Google's issues are closing in on all sides.

Microsoft is in a good position right now, in the short term, Apple is on certain fronts as well. (Mobile would go to Apple in the short term, though OEMs looking to escape Android might take a new look at wherever Windows Phone gets to in the next year or two of development work.)

Re: Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

#90

Post by tomp » Tue, May 24, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #77

tomp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "forget the law, anything we think is unreasonable is illegal" That's basically how all Anglo-Saxon (including the US) law, i.e. case law, looks like.

But "unreasonable" means something closer to its literal meaning in U.S. law. It means a conclusion that a rational person would not reach. So "unreasonable" is a pretty strong safeguard. It's hard to reach an "unreasonable" conclusion about your legal obligations by accident. In the criminal context, we also have the rule of leniety, which holds that ambiguities in criminal laws are resolved in favor of the defendan…

> It means a conclusion that a rational person would not reach. So "unreasonable" is a pretty strong safeguard.

This is all nice in theory, but in practice, it's happened multiple times that the (Supreme Court's) interpretation of the same law has changed. Granted, this has happened over decades (or even generations), but this implies that (1) either the definition of what is "reasonable" has changed (I find this unlikely, or else the concept itself has little sense), or (2) there is more wiggle room when interpreting laws...