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Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

reuters.com

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Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#61

Post by Trombone12 »

adrianN wrote: post #42
conradfr wrote: post #8

I heard someone related to the Paris office raid comment when that happened. She was saying that multinational corporations always say that their organization and tax schemes are legal but that in reality it's so complex and spread in multiple countries that nobody really knows for sure and so it's only legal by default.

Isn't that true for almost everything though? The laws are so complex that no normal citizen can understand them. Even lawyers seem to disagree now and then.

No, the laws are complex when dealing with complex situations and ownership graphs of companies can be basically any finite directed graph.

But obviously most ownership is a simple two node thing with a single directed edge connecting the nodes. These are simple to decide if they are legal.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#62

Post by leonhandreke »

relearn wrote: post #34
spriggan3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically Google inc (in a tax haven) makes Google Spain pay for the use of the Google brand 8 billions. Google Spain never makes a profit since it needs to pay a fee for using the brand, thus never have to pay taxes on their huge profit, that's how they get away with it. Apple does it too, with Apple Ireland in Europe. Then Google US and Apple US just have to wait for a tax amnesty in the US in order to bring bac…

>So basically Google inc (in a tax haven) makes Google Spain pay for the use of the Google brand 8 billions. Google Spain never makes a profit since it needs to pay a fee for using the brand, thus never have to pay taxes on their huge profit, that's how they get away with it. I've seen you post this several times. Do you have a source that I could read up on this?

It's a bit more complicated than that, but yes, it seems that that's how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#63

Post by ptaipale »

axlee wrote: post #43
conradfr wrote: post #8

I heard someone related to the Paris office raid comment when that happened. She was saying that multinational corporations always say that their organization and tax schemes are legal but that in reality it's so complex and spread in multiple countries that nobody really knows for sure and so it's only legal by default.

Every company says what they are doing is legal until someone figures out it's actually not...

And typically, when some non-government organisation campaigning for higher taxes claims that company X is doing tax evasion for Y billion €, and the matter is investigated by tax authorities and arbitrated by courts, then in the end the outcome is that some decisions and definitions done by X are not according to the interpretation of law, but the final impact is about 0.001 Y, and this is just a matter of reasonably differing views on interpretation of law, and no crime has been committed.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#65

Post by tedmiston »

ForHackernews wrote: post #22
josephg wrote: post #16

I would expect google to keep all financial documents inside Google Drive. In doing so, I wonder what is left in the office for the Spanish authorities to find in a raid? (Google is ruthlessly paperless internally.)

Google Docs sets browser cookies. If you have a surprise raid with logged-in workstations, you have access to Drive documents as well.

Until they click "Sign out all other sessions" remotely.

I'm not sure if opening a Google Doc from the local file system would work without a connection.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#68

Post by teekert »

cmdrfred wrote: post #54
Bromskloss wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see a police force bursting in, and smoke immediately starting to rise from every computer. I mean, you could do it it software too, but it would look cool and send a signal to the officers. :-) Or you could keep the door locked.

Interesting idea. Keep the door closed, once opened (reed switch?) Write 0's to memory then pull power to the workstation. Just be sure to save your work before you go to the bathroom.

Yeah, don't cooperate with poor countries that just want taxes to be payed by civilians as well as mega rich companies. Not very nice. What would destruction of evidence get them (from a justice standpoint) in Spain?

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#69

Post by alkonaut »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #33
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can this still be possible? Shouldn't all tax legislation be such that if you break the spirit of it by having internal transfers (royalties, fees, interest) to a low-tax area, then you are still taxed based on the business that you had in the country in question, and not based on the net sum (i.e. zero). The current state of tax law is that a billion dollar company pays almost no taxes but a million dollar compa…

> How can this still be possible? Shouldn't all tax legislation be such that if you break the spirit of it by having internal transfers (royalties, fees, interest) to a low-tax area, then you are still taxed based on the business that you had in the country in question, and based on the net sum (i.e. zero). How would that even work? The costs are actually costs. Imagine it was actually a dozen different companies. On…

> How would that even work? The costs are actually costs.

I'm not sure how it would work. Corporate income taxes don't make much sense in itself of course. The profits could be taxed as cap gains and everyone would be happy - so long as companies weren't multinational.

The problem here is that a company may be making a huge profit in some country by using resources paid for by tax money in that country (such as roads, in the case of Uber) but due to licensing and the ownership structure, the company does little income in the country and no cap gains either because the owners are elsewhere.

The only solution to this problem if you do have corporate income tax is to establish how much profits Uber actually made in each country, and have the profits taxed correspondingly.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#70

Post by CydeWeys »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #64

Spain shaking down Google, while the US shakes down VW. A trade war by any other name...

I don't see how you can possibly make this comparison. What VW did is so much worse than legal but creative tax strategies. VW deserves to pay for all of the harm it did to the environment and our lungs.
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