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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

#141

Post by criley2 »

tim333 wrote: post #130
bleepbloop22 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't blame the companies for lobbying and creating the tax laws either -- they're just acting rationally! Maybe we can blame people for behaving unethically instead of believing this shlock?

Blaming is of limited use. What we need is a solution to make things better. Something like a global tax office to deal with global companies might do it.

"Global tax office"

You would quite literally see revolt / insurrection in the western world, especially America and other former anglo colonies, at the idea of a One World Tax Authority, which would rightfully be seen as a part of one world government, the so-called New World Order that conservatives have maintain DEFCON1 fear of for decades.

Even if it did exist, if if you had a global tax authority with the weight of a global government to enforce it... that doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

There are plenty of tax havens in American states despite a national legislature that could squash them.

On big reason Americans were unrepresented in the Panama Papers leak is that Americans used on-shored havens. They had far less need of an offshore haven when current corporate tax rules allow you to incorporate and tax dodge in Delaware or another friendly state without leaving the country.

If the US can't or won't control domestic tax havens, I'm not so sure a global government would have better luck.

Plus, one world tax authority means one single target for corruption. The Googles of the world, with literal billions to spend, they'd hyper-focus on corrupting that authority to their desires.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#142

Post by tvanantwerp »

jernfrost wrote: post #134
deelowe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's infrastructure is almost all custom. There's a lot of people who would be out of a job if there was suddenly a >30% premium added to Google's infrastructure when compared to OEMs. If you want the laws to change, change the laws. The issue is the government, not the companies that are simply playing by the rules.

"Simply playing by the rules". No they aren't. They are paying a small fortune to figure out how to avoid paying taxes by following the letter of the law. However they break the spirit of the law, and hence are not playing by the rules. This is not different from using drugs to win sports which hasn't yet been banned because it is too new. Strictly speaking it is legal, but it is both immoral and unethical. The probl…

If I wrote a program with bugs in it and it returned unexpected and undesirable results, I couldn't reasonably say that the code breaks the spirit of my program. I simply wrote bad code and should fix it. I can no more expect a company of tens of thousands of individual to all perfectly adhere to some nebulous "spirit" than I can expect my computer to magically intuit my desires and do that rather than my actual mistaken request.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#143

Post by ComodoHacker »

spacehome wrote: post #119
ComodoHacker wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monsters of such scale should be viewed from different points, including social responsibility. BTW why do you bother as a shareholder, do you receive any dividends?

I don't have the slightest idea if they pay dividends. I own Google shares indirectly via ownership of index funds.

Google shares will grow regardless of how much taxes they pay. But they may fluctuate if tax evasion scandal breaks.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#144

Post by ptaipale »

jernfrost wrote: post #116
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain, and other Euro countries, have "paper" laws. Everything needs to be printed out and stored to make raids like these easier on the government. It also keeps their tax authority from ever having to worry about modernizing and, frankly, makes it easier for the government to manufacture "irregularities." I think the financial crisis in some of these EU countries have reached a point where they are politically para…

You are presenting a completely biased and anti-european view, looking at multinationals with the most rose tinted glasses. Google, like many other multinationals pay absolutely minuscule taxes. They have eradicated large parts of national advertisement companies across Europe, who all have to pay normal tax rates, while Google pays close to zero. You are not a leftwing nutjob just because you want companies to pay t…

AFAIK Google pays the same VAT as everyone else, which is the bulk of collected tax (particularly when you consider that if Google has no significant operations in the country, it has no VAT payments to deduct).

Google (and other on-line operators) have taken market from national advertisement companies because they are much more efficient and offer more value, not because of taxes.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#145

Post by kuschku »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #44
saalweachter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the huge "problem" that the countries in the EU want to maintain sovereignty. France and Spain can't really stop Ireland from doing whatever the hell it wants without giving up some of their own sovereignty. In the United States, one of the biggest powers of the Federal government is its power to regulate interstate commerce. No one in the EU is willing to give it so much authority.

> In the United States, one of the biggest powers of the Federal government is its power to regulate interstate commerce. No one in the EU is willing to give it so much authority. To be fair, if the US is the model, you can imagine why they wouldn't want that. I don't think the people who wrote the commerce clause were imagining federal micromanagement of local schools or the War on Drugs.

Interestingly, not even in Germany the federal government micromanages the schools.

So even Germany is less integrated than the US on that. Even after 200 years of every closer integrations.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#146

Post by fizzbatter »

tim333 wrote: post #130
bleepbloop22 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't blame the companies for lobbying and creating the tax laws either -- they're just acting rationally! Maybe we can blame people for behaving unethically instead of believing this shlock?

Blaming is of limited use. What we need is a solution to make things better. Something like a global tax office to deal with global companies might do it.

Seems like a grand solution when we're failing even the lesser and more obvious solution: Don't allow them to ship earnings into havens.

Saying we can tax them globally is like saying we can tax them domestically. We fail on the latter, so i can't imagine we'd succeed on the former.

And while i do agree that blame alone is of little use, blame is often the precursor to action. You have to decide who is at fault and or what to focus fixes on, via blame, before you can actually fix them imo. When i see blame discussions like the above, i just assume (perhaps foolishly) that it's the discussion prior to the fixing stage.

Not that the above discussion will fix anything, of course.. but if we can't decide on what is to blame, how can we decide what is to be fixed?

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#147

Post by deelowe »

jernfrost wrote: post #134
deelowe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's infrastructure is almost all custom. There's a lot of people who would be out of a job if there was suddenly a >30% premium added to Google's infrastructure when compared to OEMs. If you want the laws to change, change the laws. The issue is the government, not the companies that are simply playing by the rules.

"Simply playing by the rules". No they aren't. They are paying a small fortune to figure out how to avoid paying taxes by following the letter of the law. However they break the spirit of the law, and hence are not playing by the rules. This is not different from using drugs to win sports which hasn't yet been banned because it is too new. Strictly speaking it is legal, but it is both immoral and unethical. The probl…

I run a rental business and purposely purchase products that I need for personal use such that it can be deducted as a rental expense. As long as I use it >50% for rental stuff it's tax deductible.

Should I feel bad?

More specifically, does this violate the "spirit of the law?"

Even more specifically, every other rental owner does the same thing, so even if I change my behavior, I'm at a disadvantage with my competitors.

Again, your issues are with the government, not the companies that are following the law.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#148

Post by drzaiusapelord »

chimeracoder wrote: post #122
JoshTriplett wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Off-topic meta-conversation.) HN tends to downvote any political comments, especially comments that turn the discussion more political, even in a story that already tangentially touches on politics. The HN guidelines more-or-less document the former; the latter seems like a natural consequence. In general, politics is almost always off-topic here; there are many other places to discuss politics. (Personally, I tend…

> HN tends to downvote any political comments, especially comments that turn the discussion more political, even in a story that already tangentially touches on politics That's... really not true. Case-in-point: look at any frontpage post that talks about health insurance, wage floors, guaranteed minimum income, etc. There's a clearly dominant opinion, and left-leaning opinions tend to be the most frequently-posted (…

The fact that your excellent and sourced comment has been downvoted to the point of it being near invisible on my screen just further proves your point.

>There are topics on which I have a lot of domain knowledge relative to the typical HN commenter.

I also agree with this. I have domain knowledge in a couple odd places and the top voted comments on these domains on places like reddit or HN are embrassingly wrong. It used to be we'd get a random expert drop some serious knowledge but those people seem to be gone. If you're just a run of the mill Joe and finding your random musings racing to the top via upvotes, chances are you don't know what you're really talking about, but you know how to "work the room."

Experts usually have better things to do and probably get easily discouraged by being downvoted and having to real with disingenuous or ignorant replies. Internet forums have a real problem with Dunning-Kruger suffering participants. Say, some geek does a little light reading and now thinks he's an expert on some topic. The guys upvoting him did the same light reading. So if you disagree with that Salon or Guardian or Huffpost narrative, then you're going to be downvoted because it goes against what the "local experts" think. The problem is that article, even if it isn't biased, certainly has not exhausted the problem domain or touched upon more advanced criticisms or alternative theories. How could it, in an article written for a general audience and often under 700 words?

Its a bit like being in a small town. You don't criticize the local pastor or mayor, unless you want an earful on how "we all know better than you." This is also why certain types of people flee small towns. Its insular nature is same as on internet forums unfortunately. Being mindful of this seems to be the only sane path forward and having serious skepticism of popular internet narratives as well.

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#149

Post by kuschku »

CydeWeys wrote: post #70
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.

Yes, just like GM, BMW, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Ford, Fiat do.

All of which bought and used the exact same defeat device.

So why is only VW being punished, and why almost 1.5 years after the EPA learnt about it?

Re: Spanish authorities raid Google offices over tax

#150

Post by pyrale »

charlesdm wrote: post #41
slv77 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically the firm creates a subsidiary that holds its intellectual property like patents, software and trademarks in a tax haven like Bermuda. Since there is no operations or R&D in those locations they may have little or no employees. The subsidiaries in the high tax jurisdictions then license the IP from the Bermuda entity which siphons off profits. Without the IP cross licensing deals the French subsidiary would…

But how does not licensing IP make sense? That creates a whole set of new problems, i.e. why should affiliated parties allow IP to be licensed for free, where the same expenses would be tax deductible for unaffiliated parties?

It makes sense to license the IP. Pushing the IP fees to the point that the subsidiary doesn't make money, not so much.

Likewise, it makes sense to loan money to your subsidiaries so they can grow. But making large, unnecessary loans of money from tax havens to sink your subsidiary's profitability doesn't sound honest.

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