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Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#61

Post by davidf18 »

greyman wrote: post #58
davidf18 wrote: post #57

Amazon and Starbucks spend a lot of money to hire highly competent tax attorneys and other staff to minimize their payment of taxes. Instead of complaining, countries need to pay more money to hire even brighter people to write better tax laws. Citizens of these countries need to elect officials who will do the hiring and not have obstructive laws that prohibits the payment of the large salaries and fees necessary to…

But what can you do if countries like Ireland or Malta just allows tax evasion?

Well, you can threaten to throw them out of the EU if they don't fix their unfair (to other member countries) laws.

The EU should have more statutory authority for laws like this just as in the case of the US Federal Government over State governments.

At any rate, don't blame Amazon, Starbucks, but rather blame wealthy governments that refuse to spend the money for talent that can fix the laws (or iteratively "refix" them).

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#62

Post by rayiner »

davidf18 wrote: post #57

Amazon and Starbucks spend a lot of money to hire highly competent tax attorneys and other staff to minimize their payment of taxes. Instead of complaining, countries need to pay more money to hire even brighter people to write better tax laws. Citizens of these countries need to elect officials who will do the hiring and not have obstructive laws that prohibits the payment of the large salaries and fees necessary to…

The tax attorney thing is a red herring. Wal-Mart averaged a 29% tax rate from 2008 to 2012--higher than your average American and much higher than companies like Apple and Google. You think Wal-Mart can't afford good tax lawyers? Or to lobby aggressively for tax breaks?

No, the problem both Wal-Mart and the local sausage cart have is they're "meat space" businesses. They can't shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions by parking key IP there. Their ability to arbitrage otherwise reasonable tax laws is limited by the physical nature of their businesses.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#63

Post by nickff »

rayiner wrote: post #29
marktheknife wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to quibble a bit, hopefully not in an annoying fashion. The distinction is that the tax system does not give a deduction to individuals who are spending their money on personal "consumptive" reasons. By and large, the system does give deductions for expenses incurred for business. In this light, the double taxation of corporations is unusual. Clearly, the dividends are to pay back investors, just as interes…

Payment of dividends isn't either interest or a repayment of principal, since there is no obligation to pay dividends. They're also not expenses, since the company would generate the same revenue with or without paying dividends.

You are assuming that the company could obtain financing while never buying back stock or paying dividends? This seems to be an implicit (and often explicit) part of the fiduciary duty of the corporate officers (maximizing shareholder returns in the short or long term). I would not purchase stock from a corporation that promised never to return money to shareholders.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#64

Post by hga »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #52
hga wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or this is a establishment politician with a weak hold on power who has not necessarily got his facts right, or if he's talking about absolute numbers vs. rates is probably lying through his teeth, but knows bashing foreign companies is a crowd pleaser. And maybe they overtax those sausage stalls, lots of/most every? country has tax regimes with lots of insanity. Apple wouldn't be playing the games it plays with the…

>Apple wouldn't be playing the games it plays with the US if we didn't have the 2nd highest or so corporate tax rate in the world How low do you think that tax rate would have to be? Ireland's corporation tax rate is just 12.5%, but Apple didn't pay that either. They had a special deal under which their effective tax rate was as low as 0.005% to 1%. This is the deal that the EU has now ruled against under furious pro…

Echoing nickff, obviously they're going to seek out the lowest tax rate they can find for the greatest amount of money they can put there.

But surely you can see that 35% is so high a rate they'll focus more on tax avoidance than is healthy for any of these parties, including themselves?

The item I saw about regions indicated Europe was at around 18%. The nickff cited 6%, 12%, 18%, all those are reasonable, as well as 0%, since the taxes they pay by definition eventually get passed on to others. Some wags had commented WRT to the Christian duty to tithe, "If 10% is good enough for God, why isn't is good enough for the Federal government?"

That they and so many other US based companies have accumulated such huge offshore pots of money is one of those distortions I go into in my rather long post you're replying to. I submit to you it wouldn't be so huge if repatriating it to the US wouldn't automatically cost them 35% of it. By policy endorsed by no less a moral authority than the US Supreme Court, it's their right, if not their duty, to avoid as much tax as they can.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#65

Post by rando444 »

rayiner wrote: post #62
davidf18 wrote: post #57

Amazon and Starbucks spend a lot of money to hire highly competent tax attorneys and other staff to minimize their payment of taxes. Instead of complaining, countries need to pay more money to hire even brighter people to write better tax laws. Citizens of these countries need to elect officials who will do the hiring and not have obstructive laws that prohibits the payment of the large salaries and fees necessary to…

The tax attorney thing is a red herring. Wal-Mart averaged a 29% tax rate from 2008 to 2012--higher than your average American and much higher than companies like Apple and Google. You think Wal-Mart can't afford good tax lawyers? Or to lobby aggressively for tax breaks? No, the problem both Wal-Mart and the local sausage cart have is they're "meat space" businesses. They can't shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions…

There are many more ways to skirt tax laws.

Look at IKEA. They operate as a non-profit, but transfer money to a holding company which licenses the IKEA brand to the non-profit.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#66

Post by Marazan »

nickff wrote: post #60
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple wouldn't be playing the games it plays with the US if we didn't have the 2nd highest or so corporate tax rate in the world How low do you think that tax rate would have to be? Ireland's corporation tax rate is just 12.5%, but Apple didn't pay that either. They had a special deal under which their effective tax rate was as low as 0.005% to 1%. This is the deal that the EU has now ruled against under furious pro…

Apple's latest report said that they paid a little over 6% in taxes, whereas the 0.005% number came from someone looking to score political points (without any evidence); do you have a trustworthy source for either the 0.005% or 1% numbers?

It's in the EU documents.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#67

Post by davidf18 »

rayiner wrote: post #62
davidf18 wrote: post #57

Amazon and Starbucks spend a lot of money to hire highly competent tax attorneys and other staff to minimize their payment of taxes. Instead of complaining, countries need to pay more money to hire even brighter people to write better tax laws. Citizens of these countries need to elect officials who will do the hiring and not have obstructive laws that prohibits the payment of the large salaries and fees necessary to…

The tax attorney thing is a red herring. Wal-Mart averaged a 29% tax rate from 2008 to 2012--higher than your average American and much higher than companies like Apple and Google. You think Wal-Mart can't afford good tax lawyers? Or to lobby aggressively for tax breaks? No, the problem both Wal-Mart and the local sausage cart have is they're "meat space" businesses. They can't shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions…

The countries simply need to hire higher competent people to construct their laws including addressing those newer types of firms such as Apple and Google. Since Wal-Mart and Starbucks are both "brick and mortar" it seems strange that Starbucks can have favorable taxes but not Wal-Mart.

Countries simply need to hire very competent people to construct the laws. Their problems with taxes is one of market competition for intelligent people to write the laws with Amazon and Google who hire people to "legally" skirt the laws, often acting in "grey" areas and loopholes.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#68

Post by [deleted] »

Marazan wrote: post #66
nickff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's latest report said that they paid a little over 6% in taxes, whereas the 0.005% number came from someone looking to score political points (without any evidence); do you have a trustworthy source for either the 0.005% or 1% numbers?

It's in the EU documents.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#69

Post by nickff »

Marazan wrote: post #66
nickff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's latest report said that they paid a little over 6% in taxes, whereas the 0.005% number came from someone looking to score political points (without any evidence); do you have a trustworthy source for either the 0.005% or 1% numbers?

It's in the EU documents.

My understanding is that EU documents estimate that number for the Irish tax take as percentage of total global revenue, it isn't their total effective tax rate (on profits as is common for corporations). The parent used a meaningless number in a misleading fashion.

Re: Amazon and Starbucks pay less tax than sausage stall, says Austria

#70

Post by davidf18 »

rando444 wrote: post #65
rayiner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax attorney thing is a red herring. Wal-Mart averaged a 29% tax rate from 2008 to 2012--higher than your average American and much higher than companies like Apple and Google. You think Wal-Mart can't afford good tax lawyers? Or to lobby aggressively for tax breaks? No, the problem both Wal-Mart and the local sausage cart have is they're "meat space" businesses. They can't shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions…

There are many more ways to skirt tax laws. Look at IKEA. They operate as a non-profit, but transfer money to a holding company which licenses the IKEA brand to the non-profit.

The countries simply need to pass laws or use some sort of legal intervention that counter this abuse of the law.

Many US firms were buying out foreign firms and transferring their HQ to the bought out firm, simply to avoid taxes, not for any other strategic or operational reasons. Pfizer going to have a $160 billion merger with Allergen for this very reason, called an "inversion" but the US government intervened and the merger and Pfizer's tax avoidance was called off.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pfizer-aller...

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